Markdown editors

May 9, 2020 — March 10, 2023

academe
computers are awful
faster pussycat
plain text
UI
workflow

The main point IMO of the markdown format was that it is supposed to be easy to read and not require a specialised editor. Nonetheless, people inevitably end up wanting one, because we want to integrate document syncing, mathematics preview, image linking, or note taking, etc.

There are many, both integrated into normal text editors and more specialised editors; see e.g. this review for an overview of some interesting ones. In particular, some of the note taking systems use markdown as the backend and double as markdown editors.

🏗

1 VS code

My own workflow is based on VS code these days, and I use that as much as possible for my markdown editing as well. It has built-in markdown preview, although various friction points for mathematics.

2 Rstudio

RStudio has a neatly integrated markdown editor, especially for RMarkdown documents, which I also use.

3 Notes apps

Notational Velocity, Joplin, Turtl, and Zettlr are all note-taking apps that happen to work in markdown and thus include markdown editors.

4 Typora

Typora is another one that I’ve seen that seems popular. Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Does look pretty and highly polished. Hipster support, e.g. from Mathpix.

5 neutrinote

6 Markdown plus

Markdown plus has an open-source online version and offline apps you can buy to support the creators.

7 Markdeep

markdeep is a designerly markdown renderer with good integration to other javascript-markdown outputs.

8 Command-line markdown viewers