Ask HN: Is there any beautiful Markdown editor?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

There’s Marktext [0] that is pleasant, feature rich and has a minimalist UI.

[0] https://github.com/marktext/marktext

I always liked Dropbox Paper's pseudo-markdown. I also liked their font enough to buy a license for my own website.

I feel like we’re coming full circle.

1. Existing rich text solutions require applications to edit, let’s make one that is so simple you can read/write in plaintext. Markdown is born.

2. Wait I need more features, let’s add more stuff

3. Hey this is too complicated to work with, I need an editor!

That being said, check this out: https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/markdown

vscode + markdown preview :)

Typora has an elegant, minimalist interface: https://typora.io/

I've had good results with https://typora.io/ writing articles a couple of years ago.

It was free when I was using it because it was in beta, it's now $15. If I needed to write in markdown more regularly I'd probably buy it.

I quite like Ghostwriter: https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/

iA Writer

Personally I'd say vim, but I respect those that will say emacs.

Obsidian and Bear are both nice, with Obsidian operating on plain text files and Bear being able to export to such.

I recently discovered Zettlr and frankly I'm pleased enough with it: cross-platform, does the job well-enough. You can always use an extension for VSC or emacs,etc. but when simply wanting to read a markdown file I use this one. Previously I tried Typora and others but I'm not willing to pay for a markdown reader. Maybe for an editor, whenever I'll decide writing (though I'd use emacs 9/10 times)

Side-topic: I wish popular markdown renderers used indents and more pronounced v-margins for different levels of headings, and/or some more visual cues. Long md docs are so hard to read and skim through because h4-h6 are indistinguishable from text or are even less visible than it.

E.g. https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-session

StackEdit has fully taken over all of my Markdown note writing. It's a fabulous free little PWA that keeps things simple and gets the job done.

Org mode with markdown export through pandoc

    'ob-md-export-{to,as}-markdown

Just use VS Code with a nice theme and some plugins. Or org-mode.

Markably would be it for me, it's a Progressive Web App, so it works offline.

[0]: https://app.markably.io/

vim is pretty beautiful.

If you use Emacs, these face tweaks (and `imenu-list`) I mentioned the other day help aesthetics and readability lot, IMHO:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32716762

One thing I forgot to mention is that Emacs's normal `M-q` "filling" works well with `markdown-mode` -- makes the text tidier, and makes nested bullets and enumerations more legible. (And you might want to `M-x customize-variable RET fill-column RET` to 79 or 80, rather than the historical default of 72.)

I have drawn a blurry line of what constitutes an OK, beauty-ish, well-done tool. Beyond that, all are the same. I tend to continue with the one I got earlier that works fine. These days, I write quite a lot of plaintext/markdown in Obsidian and Sublime Text.

However, if I have to flush out an editor focusing on writing, then iA Writer[1] is beautiful. I got my copy long back when they released it and never had to pay additional to use it or a subscription. Have an attachment with iA.net as one of those clean, minimal design companies, and my long-term product design friend used to intern with the company.

1. https://ia.net/writer

On macOS, iOS I can recommend https://ia.net/writer. There's not really space to be ugly as it's very minimal.

I only use editors that render markdown with the markup. I found:

Desktop: https://typora.io/

Mobile (and Desktop): https://jotterpad.app/

I enjoy Obsidian [1] daily. Perhaps more than a minimal editor, but very powerful overall.

[1] https://obsidian.md/