Typora: A truly minimal markdown editor

[keroro]

Also check out the near-identical open source clone, marktext. Typora will no longer be free once out of beta.

https://github.com/marktext/marktext

[stanislavb]

Also, here it is a list with even more alternatives https://www.saashub.com/typora-alternatives

[VvR-Ox]

Thank you so much!

I am addicted to Typora and this looks like it could get close. I'll try it and hopefully be able to switch before it's too late.

The idea to make a md-editor really WYSIWYG in the same window is a killer feature.

Of course MD exists so you don't have to bother with layout etc. but in my opinion I also don't have to see the formatting code (even if it's MD) once it is applied. This solution for me is the best to write texts, blog posts etc. as it is the maximum of distraction-free I ever saw.

[haraball]

Thanks for sharing, this editor has quite a few nice features! Using @ for quickly inserting different markdown formattings is a nice touch compared to having to remember them.

[thomasfl]

Thanks! Typora looks like fork of Mark Text. Their both very good.

[mikeruhl]

this is really good to know. I've been using Typora for the past year and, at this point, I can't live without it for making md files before committing. Thanks!

[johnisgood]

Wow thank you so much!

[dmytton]

Due to the bugs in Apple Notes on macOS 10.15 and iOS 13, I just spent some time evaluating as many note taking apps for Mac as possible. I ended up picking https://ia.net/writer

Typora was interesting but it was very buggy, and doesn't handle tags which are important for notes.

My main criteria were an open file format, ideally editing plain text files on disk using Markdown as the formatting. This ruled out apps like OneNote, InkDrop, Standard Notes and others.

If you don't mind about having a proprietary database so long as the data can be exported to Markdown, https://bear.app is my favourite so long as you're on an Apple device.

I will also be interested in https://nvultra.com/ once it comes out of private beta.

I published my full writeup today at https://davidmytton.blog/the-best-note-taking-apps-for-mac-m...

[throwGuardian]

After reading your review, lack of tags and "Electron" were you biggest complaints against Typora. Typora is not a notes manger, and reviewing it for what it's not trying to be, is unfair. As for electron, despite the perception of being a hog, Typora's resource usage is about 150MB in RAM and 0.5% CPU when idle. I think your modern MacBook pro can trivially handle that.

In my opinion, Typora's advantages are:

1. WYSIWYG markdown. I don't believe iAWriter is WYSIWYG. While that's ok for developers, Typora is more widely usable.

2. Extensions: from Mermaid, LateX, sequence diagrams to code highlighting, to export to ePub (via Pandoc), Typora is a lot more versatile

3. Saves files as text (.md) and assets, easily searchable via OS. Highly portable

4. Cross platform (Mac, Windows, Linux)

[Shinkirou]

What a very complete and interesting writeup, thank you for sharing.

I've also recently started using iA Writer, on Win 10 and Android. The program is solid to a fault and extremely well designed, with the flexibility of saving .md files that you can save and export everywhere. Highly recommended!

[jason_slack]

I have been using IA Writer too, but it doesn't support GitHub flavor markdown. So sometimes when I take content from IA Writer and paste it into GitHub (or even Discourse) the formatting and specifics are off or just not working without massaging things a bit.

For my every day writings and academic pursuits IA Writer does work really well.

[austhrow743]

FYI OneNote is free and in Bear you can export all notes at once to markdown which if coming from Notes you may not have thought to try. Can have a folder with all of your notes stored in markdown within a couple seconds.

[Scarbutt]

Since you evaluated proprietary versions, have you check out notion.io? For note taking, I have found it great.

[taeric]

You should check out org-mode in emacs. Fits your main criteria perfectly. :)

[hs86]

Most features can be covered by a few VSCode extensions like these:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=yzhang.m...

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=mushan.v...

Other code editors probably have similar extensions and syncing the notes could be done with Dropbox/git/whatever...

I am also surprised how well https://tabnine.com/ works with auto-completion for arbitrary notes.

[VvR-Ox]

Yes this is nice but you can't really compare it to a standalone app like Typora / MarkText besides how it handles the content.

Some people don't need the 1k features VS Code gives you but some really good, minimalist editor to write MD with latex, images etc. I would not install an IDE to achieve this.

[Sendotsh]

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I'm a Typora user who had no idea VSCode had a markdown extension. I just played with it, and it's really good, and I'll probably switch to it now as I already have VSCode open most of the time.

[nickjj]

Are most of you using dedicated markdown editors?

What about using your code editor's markdown plugin and real time preview in a browser?

For example with Vim, one of the plugins launches a browser and then you get a real time preview while you type in Vim. The nice thing is you can tell it to use a specific CSS file so you can get a 100% copy of GitHub's README styles. It even syncs your cursor if you want that behavior.

I demo'd the above set up here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/writing-and-previewing-markdo...

[ScottFree]

In my opinion, markdown is a document format not unlike Rich Text Format (RTF). I want a program to read it, style it and let me edit it the way it's intended to be read. I don't want to see the code unless the program is getting in my way. I'm sure everybody's come across a text editor that insists you meant to indent that next bullet point and gets very stubborn when you want to do something different. That's what I like about Typora. I don't have to think about the code until I want to do something the program doesn't want me to do. When that happens, I can switch to code view and make it do exactly what I want it to do. Then I switch back WYSIWG mode and keep going.

[abfar]

I also just use Vim to write markdowns, but without any markdown plugins (beside the built-in markdown syntax highlighting in Vim) and I compile the document to pdf manually using Pandoc. I rarely need to write markdowns though, and my usage is not advanced at all (like to write simple writeups that sometimes require maths and code blocks, which I only use for myself). So Vim + Pandoc is enough for me.

[afarrell]

I use vim for markdown editing, but I've been searching for a better alternative. Mainly, I want to be able to easily copy-paste between the editor and other programs. This is hard with vim because yank doesn't pull into the system clipboard by default. In my 11 years of working with vim, I've only found a reliable way to configure that behaviour twice, but it stopped working.

[mjclemente]

After trying nearly every markdown editor out there (Mou, Byword, Macdown, iA Writer, and Caret, to name a few), I found Typora. I've been using it for the past year and find it delightful - it does everything that I want a markdown editor to do, in an elegant and intuitive way. I'm not tied to the company in any way, just really love the software (and hope it succeeds). I'll happily pay to support it when it comes out of beta.

[tsp]

I tried about every noteworthy Markdown editor in recent years. Typora is the one I am still using. Great work. I hope they don’t ask for a subscription fee, but one time payment, once out of beta.

[nyxcharon]

Yeah agreed. I remember trying around 15 different dedicated editors and Typora was the first one to really grab my attention. I've been using it ever since. I don't usually buy much software, but would be happy to buy Typora if it was a one time payment.

[VvR-Ox]

+1 I'll pay one time but only if they open source it.

[atoav]

Using this since at least two years and it constantly got better and expanded. The one thing that I still love this for is that it starts quick and it is a incredible way to explain markdown to beginners.

One thing that could improve is the update mechanism which sometimes distrafts you from writing at startup, but that is really a tiny nitpick.

[josephhurtado]

Beautiful editor, one of my favorites, and surprisingly free and multi-platform: works in Mac OS, Windows and Linux.

[mwexler]

Free now, but out of beta, will have some type of pricing model, accd to the site. Just saying.

[lawry]

I think this is one of the only wysiwyg editors for markdown with latex support. Have been using it for the past half year and it works like a charm!

[BenGosub]

I have used Boostnote and Remarkable, on Ubuntu. After using Boostnote for a while, it started to bug me because it's slow load time (it's an Electron app), so I searched for something native and found Remarkable, which is simple and really fast. It just lacks some of the organization features that Boostnote offers.

[jawarner]

I liked Remarkable initially. But its development has stopped with bugs outstanding. One is that typing with live-preview enabled jumps the viewport to the top. Typora seems nicer.

[app4soft]

Is there any JavaScript-free WYSIWYG Markdown editor?

[bchanudet]

On Linux I found Ghostwriter¹. It's working really fine, I use it for all my personal writings.

There is also a port² on Windows but it seems less reliable, I've seen it crash a few times, I still have to report it or try to fix it.

¹ https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/

² https://github.com/michelolvera/vs-ghostwriter

[tiborsaas]

Maybe this: https://github.com/tcr/edit-text

But yeah, most browser based WYSIWYG editors are JS based, since you need to manipulate the DOM.

If you are not targeting the browser then you maybe find something here:

https://philippegroarke.com/posts/2018/c++_ui_solutions/

[cik]

I'm happier with retext (https://github.com/retext-project/retext). Fully open-sourced, live preview, and taking ~50% less resources than Typora to deliver the same features. If I'm not using vim, I'm in live preview mode in retext.

[ta0xdeadbeef]

LaTeX coverage is as much as I need, and it renders to SVG when exporting as HTML. You've got yourself one more user!

[__m]

You can’t beat a plain texteditor or html form in terms of minimalism. Seems like the wrong point to highlight

[VvR-Ox]

Then you did not understand the main feature of Typora & Co:

_real WYSIWYG_ writing MD in various flavors. Don't try to tell anyone a plain editor could even begin to compete - it is about MD being applied while you type and then quickly getting out of your way.

[cliff_badger]

Has anyone found a decent solution to real time rendering of ReStructruedText (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReStructuredText)?

[kunai]

Hard to say that it is "truly minimal" when it uses Electron. There was a time when 75MB of memory usage would have been considered absolutely massive for an application with similar functionality.

Nice UI though.

[SyneRyder]

Typora is probably the best Electron app I've ever seen, but I ultimately switched to the MarkdownLivePreview package for Sublime Text. I definitely prefer having a more native app over Electron.

[1] https://packagecontrol.io/packages/MarkdownLivePreview

[thunderbong]

I think the 'truly minimal' refers to the UI!

[Hitton]

I agree, but I feel it's justified using Electron in this case, because Markdown can be combined with any HTML. So when you need a rendering engine, you might as well use Chromium's from Electron.

[brazzy]

There was also a time when vi was considered a memory hog with crazy feature creep.

[CareyB]

Wow! WordPerfect reimagined.

[mwexler]

I keep coming back to simplenote (https://app.simplenote.com/) each time I try one of these "minimal markdown editors". Works on every platform I've tried, open source, and maintained. I enjoy seeing folks making improvements to the minimal model, but I personally haven't found any life-changing enough to switch. Keep recommending options, though, I'm looking forward to seeing what folks create!

[dddw]

I use it to make quit drafts, real nice to instantly have markdown markup. would tip this to people who start wqrint in markdown

[dagdesheren]

It’s OK but not that astonishing. Still prefer to write in the default notepad because it just werks