Adding a list of features would be nice. Does it support checkboxes? Mermaid? Folding? Does the editor it comes with support search and replace? Multi-caret editing?
Maybe it’s just me, but I have long stopped downloading stuff just in case it’s good. You have to convince me first, then I will download.
Yeah, $15 for a markdown editor that's locked to a maximum of 3 devices that I don't even control is a tall ask. OPs program is significantly more attractive.
Typora is my go-to markdown editor and imo really worth it.
One really nice feature it has is the ability to paste in images and have them automatically get put in a pre-defined folder, which is pretty crucial to static blog site deployment.
I'm _really really_ not a fan of the app insisting on defining a 'project' before allowing you to open a file. I recognize that project-oriented management is probably a requirement for something like this given that markdown files usually do exist as a collection of related documents, but I regularly want to just open a README.md.
Haven’t tried Marker so I don’t know how it works, but at least in Obsidian “projects” are just folders. At least for my usage, this isn’t really an issue because most of the Markdown files I create are going to be in one of a few locations (blog posts, mind dumps, etc).
It’s still useful to have a one-off editor but there are several programs that can fill that purpose well.
Obsidian isn't terrible, I just wish I could open a single Markdown file. README.md is pretty common; any arbitrary location can contain a .md file that I might want to open.
Marker looks a lot worse, though. I gave my 'project' a name and selected a folder—one containing a big hierarchy, tbf, but the app gave no guidance. All I get now is a blank window, even when I restart. There doesn't seem to be any menu item that will let me create a new project or recover from this state. I guess I'll have to reinstall...
This is the problem with the 'project' (or 'vault') approach, IMO—if I'm just opening a file, I know what that is, what it means. When your app revolves around some bespoke notion of whatever a 'project' is, and that's the first experience of your app I get, that's not great.
Obsidian is vault-centric and has some harsh limitations in what workflows it allows because of this. It doesn't matter whether vaults are folders, because there is more to this than just the folder. This is really annoying, because Obsidian is a one of the best markdown-editors at the moment, with a good plugin-community, unlike others.
It is a great editor. Your points are spot on. The vault-centric use of Obsidian is limiting, and has stopped me from using it as my main editor. I use it only for a single synced vault. All other md files are edited using other tools.
You'll like Drafts app. Open the app and start typing. Only then decide what you gonna do with the text.
It's a native macOS app, so it starts instantly. I use it for everything – from writing articles to comments/messages, where I care a bit more about not making typos or accidentally sending before proofreading.
Drafts is really about the automations you can do on your text in order to get it out of Drafts. The idea is you throw some text into Drafts — because it's quicker to create text in Drafts than in pretty much any other app — and then use an automation to do some minor parsing, reformat, add metadata, etc before sending the data to its final destination.
I haven't looked at Drafts, but I stopped using Notes because I started doing work that requires Windows and it lacks native cross-platform support. The in-browser experience just doesn't cut it for me for something I need as much as a notes app.
Notes is clumsy – I never can find what I want there. With folders, pinned notes, named notes, synced/unsynced etc, it's just a mess.
Drafts is just a super-reliable and fast editor that is better than any other textbox/editor. So I mostly use it for copy pasting. Even use it for HN comments that are longer than 10 lines.
Finding stuff in Notes is bad. You cannot scope a search to a subset of the collection. It's terrible. Drafts is very fast and, as plain text, is very simple. The automation is fabulous. Good support for widgets. Its sync is instant. It's a good program.
That said, I have returned to it and am abandoning Drafts. Turns out that, once you have a substantial amount of stuff, finding stuff is just as bad as Notes and I do not actually use the automation.
Also, I want Rich Text, too. I believe in plain text but, in the end, I cannot live without being able to easily set text to be bold, colored or large so that I can see the important parts. Still, I am mad at Notes for not supporting Markdown because I do README and such often.
> You cannot scope a search to a subset of the collection.
Since you're back to Notes, you might be interested to know that you can now scope searches in a bunch ways — folders, Smart Folder, tags, kind (i.e. limit to notes with checklists), date range, etc. You can even search "notes created last year" to see all of your notes created last year, etc. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/notes/not18ab658ed/mac
One other, slightly off topic thing... Even if a program has a free version, if I use it in my daily life, as I have done with Drafts, I pay for it.
It is my view that the current market has coerced programmers to have free versions even though programmers cannot buy food or pay mortgages with free versions.
I consider it unethical to gain a benefit in my daily life without giving something in return. $20/year is almost too little.
Right - one of my favourite things about VS Code is I can just type "code README.md" and start using it - or "code ." to open my current working directory. Effectively it lets me treat directories as projects without fiddling around with any project configuration.
I wrote a short blog post[1] about this pattern a few years ago. I still don't understand why so many apps use this workflow, especially ones that previously didn't. Just let me deal with the project creation stuff on the first write instead of requiring all this up-front commitment!
This looks like a neat app for non-developers, but for dev's it is really hard to beat the VS Code extensions for handling markdown.
My heavily used ones are: Markdown to HTML (copy), which lets you write and preview markdown and then copy+paste it as html into things like newsletters, CMS, etc. as a single step.
The other one is Markdown to PDF, which lets you organize a series of markdown files into a coherent structure and then spits out an ebook on command.
that looks so neat! I'm building a modern cross-platform app and aiming for a similar look-and-feel so I'm curious what your stack looks like, especially the UI (it's not a note-taking app but more like spreadsheets and presentations, so I promise I'm not a competitor!)
That looks terrific and the price is fair. I am concerned about no open source local client - I don't want to rely on the company if it goes belly up (which is why I actually like paying).
I just recently moved to Org Mode but if I were still in the Markdown ecosystem I would give this tool serious consideration.
open-sourcing is on our roadmap (https://roadmap.acreom.com), when it comes to the data ownership & privacy, acreom is built on technical decisions to deliver both in full fashion.
it's local-first, all your data is stored on your device as regular markdown (no custom md flavor) and works fully offline.
I'm working on something similar (i.e. a content editor for developers) with Vrite, that's already open-source: https://github.com/vriteio/vrite
It's not the same as acreom (leaning more towards a CMS-like platform with API, real-time collab, etc.), but is well-suited for e.g. creating knowledge bases.
most of the acreom users who switched from obsidian switched over because of the UI, out of the box tasks implementation, integrations (Jira, Github etc.) and many other features which require plugins are do not provide the best experience.
acreom is designed specifically for devs and makes it easy to bring all relevant context in one place, create and track progress on your projects and capture stuff quickly.
I hear you but also in that case why not just use something like Github/Linear directly? I'm really attracted to what you're doing but when I think through it I already feel well served by stuff like Linear if it's "task" work I'm mainly trying to capture.
what acreom gets you is really be able to have your personal context tied together with the team context. Devs use it to handle they day to day, capture standup notes, create their own tasks, and when they work on large feature they can easily link that to the github PR or issue in Jira (soon Linear as well) give it a try, would love to know your feedback!
* create folder
* create page in folder
* create new page while this previous page was open
* Observe that new page is not created in current folder. Go find page in all pages and open
* Go to page info and try to change location
* App crash
What about non-devs? Not long ago I helped a non-technical friend make a website, a static one using Vuepress and Markdown files. One of the first things I did was pick a Markdown editor for her. I settled on Macdown but it's not fully visual. A fully visual one would have been much nicer for her.
But for some content I had to use escape hatches and use raw HTML. I wonder whether this app supports raw HTML.
MDX, with the custom content involved, is though.
I've been working on a hybrid WYSIWYG editor for MDX at Vrite (https://vrite.io).
Currently supports custom block elements and JSON-serializable attributes. Now looking into inline content and building an extension system to render custom previews for the nodes.
Check it out if you're interested - it's also open-source.
There is "pandoc" if you folks haven't tried it, it is amazingly simple and effective and will convert from a ton of input formats (including markdown) to a ton of output formats (including html, word, whatever).
I use Pandoc to view markdown in a terminal using `less` (see `lesspipe(1)`), either through html and `elinks` or through a custom writer ([2] forked from [1]).
Looks really cool! For anyone looking for a very similar UI but an editor that also supports complex blocks (like Kanban, images etc) you can check out my note-taking app Plume with a block editor[1] (beta is out in about a month, sign up for the waitlist!). Every note is a simple plain text string (with Markdown syntax) that is rendered via Qt C++ and QML.
Not a dig at you, but I see you plugging this on everything even remotely similar to your app. With the caveat that your product is not even out? Is the intention just to build hype?
No, the intention is to build a waitlist to get feedback from target users. I'm following sort of a similar plan the Linear guys went with[1].
EDIT: It also gives me a lot of motivation to see people liking what I build and waiting to use it - which takes tremendous tall on me since I'm working on it 24/7 every day for the past 7 months.
I think my reason for commenting was because the way you comment makes it seem like the product is out to try / "check out my product!" but the product doesn't even exist.
Recently Trello has restricted the kanban guests to ten people. If your kanban functionality has some simple file in the background that is easy to share it could be used to hack an alternative to it.
Tiptap is immensely popular, supports both Vue and React, is super lightweight and has a huge community of extensions. I've been using this since 2019 and can't recommend it enough. A number of comments here are asking for functionality that is built in, easily available as an extension, or easily add-able!
You could partially match the output by tuning your syntax highlighting rules to make various markup invisible, thus leaving you with only the bold word without the asterisks.
Though still won't help with search ignoring markup
The app isn't part of the developer program so when you try to open the app, MacOS says "You should move this app to the trash" haha!
Workaround via running:
xattr -c /Applications/Marker.app
Hehe - just to note, the logo icon "download" button is for windows: https://i.imgur.com/QqQKFWE.png - isnt it? typical the apple is on the download button for mac?
Looks interesting. I don't love the title, subtitle business. I assume it will add yaml content to the top of the post. I'd like to hide that as I don't add yaml to my markdown files.
There may be a config option for this but I didn't keep it installed long enough to find out.
149 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadAdding a list of features would be nice. Does it support checkboxes? Mermaid? Folding? Does the editor it comes with support search and replace? Multi-caret editing?
Maybe it’s just me, but I have long stopped downloading stuff just in case it’s good. You have to convince me first, then I will download.
One really nice feature it has is the ability to paste in images and have them automatically get put in a pre-defined folder, which is pretty crucial to static blog site deployment.
Typora + Blot.im have been hard to beat for me.
Programs like TextEdit and Word should have a “save as Markdown” option, but it isn’t that important.
Yes, but visualizing the _rendered_ markdown is very helpful to debug the content.
It’s still useful to have a one-off editor but there are several programs that can fill that purpose well.
Marker looks a lot worse, though. I gave my 'project' a name and selected a folder—one containing a big hierarchy, tbf, but the app gave no guidance. All I get now is a blank window, even when I restart. There doesn't seem to be any menu item that will let me create a new project or recover from this state. I guess I'll have to reinstall...
This is the problem with the 'project' (or 'vault') approach, IMO—if I'm just opening a file, I know what that is, what it means. When your app revolves around some bespoke notion of whatever a 'project' is, and that's the first experience of your app I get, that's not great.
It's a native macOS app, so it starts instantly. I use it for everything – from writing articles to comments/messages, where I care a bit more about not making typos or accidentally sending before proofreading.
Notes is clumsy – I never can find what I want there. With folders, pinned notes, named notes, synced/unsynced etc, it's just a mess.
Drafts is just a super-reliable and fast editor that is better than any other textbox/editor. So I mostly use it for copy pasting. Even use it for HN comments that are longer than 10 lines.
That said, I have returned to it and am abandoning Drafts. Turns out that, once you have a substantial amount of stuff, finding stuff is just as bad as Notes and I do not actually use the automation.
Also, I want Rich Text, too. I believe in plain text but, in the end, I cannot live without being able to easily set text to be bold, colored or large so that I can see the important parts. Still, I am mad at Notes for not supporting Markdown because I do README and such often.
Since you're back to Notes, you might be interested to know that you can now scope searches in a bunch ways — folders, Smart Folder, tags, kind (i.e. limit to notes with checklists), date range, etc. You can even search "notes created last year" to see all of your notes created last year, etc. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/notes/not18ab658ed/mac
It is my view that the current market has coerced programmers to have free versions even though programmers cannot buy food or pay mortgages with free versions.
I consider it unethical to gain a benefit in my daily life without giving something in return. $20/year is almost too little.
[1]: https://davidyat.es/2018/03/01/project-wizard/
My heavily used ones are: Markdown to HTML (copy), which lets you write and preview markdown and then copy+paste it as html into things like newsletters, CMS, etc. as a single step.
The other one is Markdown to PDF, which lets you organize a series of markdown files into a coherent structure and then spits out an ebook on command.
Any recommendations for extensions to help with authoring markdown in VSCode?
disclaimer: I am the maker of acreom
I just recently moved to Org Mode but if I were still in the Markdown ecosystem I would give this tool serious consideration.
it's local-first, all your data is stored on your device as regular markdown (no custom md flavor) and works fully offline.
the (optional) sync is free and E2E encrypted.
Too many companies have it on the roadmap and never deliver.
It's not the same as acreom (leaning more towards a CMS-like platform with API, real-time collab, etc.), but is well-suited for e.g. creating knowledge bases.
acreom is designed specifically for devs and makes it easy to bring all relevant context in one place, create and track progress on your projects and capture stuff quickly.
Every time I try to move a page to a new folder the app crashes, is this a know issue or do you want more info?
* create folder * create page in folder * create new page while this previous page was open * Observe that new page is not created in current folder. Go find page in all pages and open * Go to page info and try to change location * App crash
Happens every time for me
"Ship faster by organizing less acreom is the actionable knowledge base for 10x developers."
It'll great if you point me to one of those... Thanks.
But for some content I had to use escape hatches and use raw HTML. I wonder whether this app supports raw HTML.
YMMV, I always been pretty disappointed with VS Code's handling of markdown coming from Atom.
Currently supports custom block elements and JSON-serializable attributes. Now looking into inline content and building an extension system to render custom previews for the nodes.
Check it out if you're interested - it's also open-source.
Slightly on a tangent, anyone knows of a good markdown reader library for the terminal in python?
Here’s a Go example: https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow
Btw, the Charm/charmbracelet projects are fantastic, wish there was something like that but in python
[0] My `.lessfilter` configuration: https://gist.github.com/kpschoedel/62888f552dc9d920d600166e5...
[1] https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/pandoc-terminal-writer
[2] https://github.com/kpschoedel/pandoc-terminal-writer
[1] https://get-plume.com/
EDIT: Added the app isn't out yet (about a month more of hard work!)
Seems a bit disingenuous is all.
No, the intention is to build a waitlist to get feedback from target users. I'm following sort of a similar plan the Linear guys went with[1].
EDIT: It also gives me a lot of motivation to see people liking what I build and waiting to use it - which takes tremendous tall on me since I'm working on it 24/7 every day for the past 7 months.
[1] https://linear.app/blog/rethinking-the-startup-mvp-building-...
It feels dishonest? Like a bait and switch.
That being said, good luck.
{{kanban}}
# Todo
- [ ] todo 1
- [ ] todo 2
# In Progress
- [ ] todo 1
- [ ] todo 2
{{/kanban}}
Currently, Plume doesn't support collaboration. How do you think it can be an alternative to Trello?
https://tiptap.dev/
https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap
Tiptap is immensely popular, supports both Vue and React, is super lightweight and has a huge community of extensions. I've been using this since 2019 and can't recommend it enough. A number of comments here are asking for functionality that is built in, easily available as an extension, or easily add-able!
Isn't Tiptap a wrapper around ProseMirror that does SaaS pricing?
I'm also working on a WYSIWYG editor and using TipTap. It's great, but on its own, it's not a ready editor, but a great framework.
There's a lot you can do with TipTap (and ProseMirror) to make your editor stand out and fit your use case better than others.
Though still won't help with search ignoring markup
It's TipTap + Radix wrapped in tauri. No encryption / security features AFAICT.
There may be a config option for this but I didn't keep it installed long enough to find out.