I have found my favourite Markdown editor, again

Well, I’ve been busy.

Since I published last week’s post called The journey to finding the perfect writing app, I have spent a lot of time on my Mac trying to figure out what to do.

I managed to bring myself to use The Archive even though I don’t use the core feature of the app, its raison d’être. But something else was bugging me.

The Archive’s themes are fine. Not great, not bad, just fine. But after spending a few minutes using the exquisite design of an app like iA Writer, you realise that The Archive could look so much better if the themes were more inspired, more elegant, and less “nerdy.” Little did I know that I had just opened Pandora’s box of pain.

After hours spent fine-tuning two custom themes, one light and one dark — both now available on GitHub and submitted to the app developer as pull requests — the results were pretty good, but still not great.

You see, I had an issue with the weight of the base font: either it was too thin on the light theme or too bold on the dark theme. And I couldn’t figure out a way to use, say, SFMono-Regular on the light theme and SFMono-Light on the dark theme. I tried, I failed. I tried again and failed again. Eventually, I accepted my fate and decided to use the themes as they were, knowing they were not exactly what I wanted.

How naive I was.

Minutes after making this decision, I initiated a new quest: The journey to finding the perfect writing app, part 2.

I tried 20 apps or so on my Mac to see if there was an app better for me than The Archive. Worst-case scenario: I’d keep using The Archive, which is pretty great all things considered.

The app of my dreams needs to be, in that order:

  1. reliable
  2. fast
  3. well-designed (which goes way beyond “good-looking”)
  4. provides a sense of delight (hard to explain, but this is a thing)
  5. with the right set of features: not too many, but the essentials need to be well executed.

I won’t get into too many details and won’t try to compare all the apps. I will simply list those that I tried and explain briefly why they didn’t convince me to switch. I won’t mention TextEdit and Stickies either, as they are already on my machine and too limited.

Apps tested

The Archive: Like I said in my post from last week, the Zettelkasten thing is not for me, and the themes are a bit frustrating.

BBEdit: I wanted to use this app so badly, but the number of settings and things it can do is overwhelming.

Drafts: The more you use it, the more it’s hard to stop using it. It can be a good thing, but for me, it feels too much like a full OS rather than a writing app.

iA Writer: the Rolls-Royce of Markdown writing apps, but I don’t need a Rolls-Royce; I just need a Mazda MX-5. Also, a tiny bug ruined my short, renewed experience with it: It would have been fine with a lot of apps, but from this one I expect perfection.

uFocus: Lot of potential, but some details are not well polished, making it feel unfinished, which is a shame because it is a great iA Writer alternative, without iA Writer’s good taste.

Tot: I use it all the time on my work computer, and since it can only be linked to one iCloud account, it is not possible to use it on a second computer without sharing the same library.

CotEditor: Great, but I don’t need any other language support than Markdown. The lack of a proper full-screen focus mode is a bummer too. Themes are not the best either.1

Typewriter: Nothing especially bad about this app, but nothing especially good either.

Typora: I can see why so many people recommend this app: it’s pretty good and well-thought-out. It’s not for me though: I don’t like to see Markdown syntax disappear, and the need to edit the theme just to set up the font feels like too much effort, especially after my struggles with The Archive.

Bear: By wanting to be both a Markdown writing app and a full-featured note-taking app, this app excels at none of these things.

Ulysses: More like a truck than the speedy, fun, and easy-to-drive roadster that I’m looking for.

iWriter Pro: Very, very close to winning, but a few missing-yet-expected features, like automatically adding the URL saved in the clipboard when adding a link.

FSNotes: Justifiably praised: fast, great set of features, looks good. During my testing, the app crashed every time I created a new note while in full-screen mode. Not a great sign of reliability, even if it is surely a temporary issue.

MWeb & One Markdown: A little like Typora: I can see why this is great, but these apps are not for me as their set of features doesn’t really match my expectations or my needs.

Plain Text Editor: Too limited, but real potential if future updates are delivered with the same quality and attention to detail.

Nova: Expensive and way too complicated and powerful for my simple use, but this looks extremely good, smart, and delightful.

Taio: Not sure what to think of this. I see the idea and all the potential behind the concept, but not for me.

Minimal: I like what they are trying to do here, but I think they are trying a little too hard to swim against the current of what a typical MacOS app is.

Spaces: Didn’t expect this one to be as good as it is. Still not as good as many of the apps listed here.

Breveto: A pretty good alternative to Taio — I think. At this point, I was getting a bit tired.

And the winner is…

MarkEdit. With a K (not MarsEdit).2

This app is quite something. It was one of the first apps I tried, and I think my senses were still a bit dormant. At first, I wasn’t amazed by it; I just thought, “Well, this is pretty good”, and I moved on to the next app.

But after reviewing all the other apps and gaining some experience at judging quickly if one suits my needs or not, I decided to give a second chance to a few of them. And MarkEdit turned out to be the one.

I think the best way to explain why this app won this “competition” is to let the developer do the talking. From the GitHub page called Why MarkEdit:

In MarkEdit, opening a 10 MB file is eye-blinking (tested on an 8-yo MacBook Pro), editing a few megabytes is just the same as editing a few kilobytes. We make every keystroke as smooth as butter.

You don’t need a 300 MB app to edit Markdown files. What about 30 MB? Better, but MarkEdit is only 3 MB.

It is absurd to spend time on tools, instead of focusing on writing. […] You don’t need to learn tons of irrelevant concepts just to start writing, and when you decide to leave you won’t feel lost.

MarkEdit is not a note-taking app or knowledge base, nor is it your second brain, we don’t have a great vision like that, MarkEdit was built with “just-enough-features” for Markdown editing.

After reviewing so many apps, all these words sounded like music to my ears. This “Why MarkEdit” page, along with the page called Philosophy told me that this app was more than just another app.

The part on We Do Things Correctly was particularly interesting to me, who won’t even look at an Electron app.3

My two main gripes with it were the lack of a maximum line length in full-screen mode, and the fact that files can only be saved with the .md extension.

The first problem was solved easily: there is a way to edit the line length setting by adding a bit of CSS in a file.

The second issue is not a big one: I’ve always preferred to use .txt files, but Blot works fine with .md, and I can always change the extension later in the Finder if I need to. The app does provide a way for Quick Look to display the content of a Markdown file, which makes this “issue” easier to handle.

When I started this new quest, I didn’t expect to find something new and as great as MarkEdit. I was expecting iA Writer to make a comeback, or maybe go back to Tot and use something else for work.

1600+ words later, here I am, happy with a new, cherished app in my dock.

Now, I hope this article will help you find your writing app.`

UPDATE: apparently, the same developer is behind Taio and MarkEdit: I’m glad MarkEdit went for another approach.

UPDATE (12 March 2024): A recent update of the app allows file to be saved as .txt by default, which pretty much makes this app perfect.