Current State of Markdown Editors

Software
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We’re rebuilding our core website in Astro - a static website generator that renders markdown etc to a fast, clean site.

The default editor for most in the Astro community is VSCode. For a non-developer, this is stressful. It’s really focused on software development.

What Markdown editor can you recommend? Has to work with files anywhere on the file system.

I’ve seen:

What have I missed?

(I’m not the target audience)

2

Typora might fit your needs. Not free, but also not expensive.

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3

Any text editor can be used for Markdown. So when you say “Markdown editor”, what are the criteria that such an editor will need to meet?

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4

If i was in the Business for a Website i would probably wish for being able to use “Ulysses” for that as that’s my editor of choice for the last 10 years or so :blush:.

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Supports:

  • Preview
  • Inserting most Markdown syntax with formatting toolbar/shortcuts
  • Can handle .mdx files a valid Markdown
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6

Byword is an old favorite. It is inexpensive, simple, and clean.

Byword - Markdown text editor app for Mac, iPhone and iPad.

EDIT TO ADD I have withdrawn my recommendation. See Current State of Markdown Editors - Software - MPU Talk

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Two free-and-open-source options:

  • Zettlr is more full-featured and customizable/hackable

  • MarkText is iirc similar to Typora

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9

MarkEdit is the first option listed in the original post …

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10

And I’m always appreciative when someone doubles down. My ADHD causes me to skim and miss important details. I just assume others have the same.

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11

I’ve asked Ulysses people if they support .mdx as a valid markdown file extension. Danke - Mark

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The ones I personally own and/or have used in the past:

  • iA Writer

  • Typora (I didn’t like that it automatically inserts two returns when you hit the return key once, and you can’t change that behavior)

  • MarkEdit (I used the Mac App Store version, but it’s now only available as a download from github)

  • Zettlr (see above)

  • Byword (It hasn’t had a meaningful update in years and doesn’t support newer conventions like == highlights)

(I’m not including PKM apps like Obsidian or those that store markdown files in databases like Drafts and Ulysses.)

I’ve also set up VS Code as a markdown editor, but its inability to autocorrect straight quotes to ”smart” ones, while understandable in code editor, was a deal breaker.

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I’m also a member of that club. :sweat_smile:

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Thanks. Duly noted and revised.

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15

Another option is to use Marked 2 along with the text editor you are currently using.

From the linked site:

Marked is a previewer for Markdown and other plain text markups. Use it with your favorite text editor and it updates every time you save.

This is what I use, along with BBEdit. Note that BBEdit has a preview function, I prefer Marked 2.

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16

MDX is so painful to handle with regular editors, in other words you need an editor with language server support.
I am using neovim with the markdown language server. I assume you can get a similar setup with VS Code.

17

BBEdit is an excellent editor. It has a built-in previewer for Markdown (but you trigger it when you want; it is not a live preview). For live previews, you could use Marked2 side-by-side with BBEdit.

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nvUltra is the forthcoming successor to nvAlt from Brett Terpstra (creator of Marked2) and Fletcher Penney (creator of the venerable MultiMarkdown Composer). nvUltra is presently in a long beta test. Fans anxiously await its availability in 2025.

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19

Thanks, @mina, for the mention of MDX. I have never used MDX before. It seems to be quite similar in intention to RMarkdown or Quarto Markdown. Quarto is a publishing platform that allows integration of code blocks (R, Python, Julia, and more), academic Markdown, citations/bibliography, tables, figures, LaTeX or Typst, and output via Pandoc to myriad formats including web pages/sites, PDFs, and Word documents.

So, returning to the OP’s question about Markdown editors… more sophisticated academic Markdown for Quarto may be written in any editor, but the previewing is done in realtime in a side-by-side browser. (The browser is needed because of JavaScript output for code, tables, etc.)

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We’ll see. I first saw their website well before the pandemic started, and it was exactly the same as it is now, with the same “Not yet, but we’re almost there!” pop-up message. I had the impression that it was probably coming within 6 months, maybe a year.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great idea and looks like a worthy successor to Notational Velocity and nvAlt, and the developers are both brilliant and interesting guys, but it’s a side project among others for both of them. (Iirc, Fletcher Penney is an emergency room physician.)

My point is just that if someone needs a solution now or in the near future, I don’t recommend waiting for nvUltra. I do look forward to testing it when it finally does become available, as it looks like it will be a great quick capture companion for Obsidian.

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I tried BBEdit, but it felt like writing in a code editor instead of a writing app, which I always find distracting and unpleasant. I was able to get VS Code looking like a proper markdown editor with themes, plugins, and settings, but didn’t see a way to do that in BBEdit.