MarkEdit

MarkEdit is a free and open-source Markdown editor, for macOS. It's just like TextEdit on Mac but dedicated to Markdown.

Tip

Discover our other free and open-source apps at libremac.github.io.

Follow our Mastodon account @MarkEditApp for the latest updates.

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iOS Port

Note

This repository contains an unofficial community iOS port of MarkEdit, built on top of the original open-source macOS app by the MarkEdit-app team. All credit for the core editor engine, CodeMirror integration, and shared frameworks belongs to the original authors. This iOS port is not affiliated with or endorsed by the original MarkEdit team.

About the iOS Implementation

The iOS port reuses the existing shared frameworks (MarkEditCore, MarkEditKit) unchanged and adds a native iOS application target (MarkEditiOS) that wraps them with iOS-specific UI:

• Document browser — built on UIDocumentBrowserViewController, integrating with the iOS Files app to open, create, and manage .md and plain-text files
• Editor — the same CodeMirror 6-based editor used on macOS, embedded in a WKWebView
• Dark mode — automatically follows the system appearance (dark/light); the editor theme defaults to GitHub Dark in dark mode and GitHub Light in light mode, and can be changed in Settings
• Toolbar — quick-access formatting bar above the keyboard (bold, italic, headings, links, lists, etc.)
• Settings — in-editor settings panel for theme, font size, line height, and more

Building the iOS App

1. Open MarkEdit.xcodeproj in Xcode
2. Select the MarkEditiOS scheme
3. Choose an iOS simulator or device (iOS 26.2+)
4. Build and run (⌘R)

No additional dependencies or setup required — everything is self-contained in the project.

Architecture

MarkEditiOS/
├── App/
│   ├── AppDelegate.swift          # UIApplicationDelegate
│   ├── SceneDelegate.swift        # UIWindowSceneDelegate — wires up the window
│   └── AppPreferences.swift       # User defaults / theme selection
├── DocumentBrowser/
│   ├── DocumentBrowserViewController.swift   # Files app integration
│   └── MarkEditDocument.swift                # UIDocument subclass
├── Editor/
│   ├── EditorViewController.swift  # WKWebView host, EditorModuleCore delegate
│   ├── EditorChunkLoader.swift     # Streaming large files into the editor
│   └── EditorToolbar.swift         # Keyboard accessory toolbar
└── Settings/
    └── SettingsViewController.swift  # Theme, font, line-height picker

The shared frameworks used by both macOS and iOS:

Framework	Purpose
MarkEditCore	CodeMirror 6 bridge — JS↔Swift messaging, editor commands
MarkEditKit	Higher-level editor modules (core, completion, search, lint, …)

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Screenshots

What makes MarkEdit different

• Privacy-focused: doesn't collect any user data
• Native: clean and intuitive, feels right at home on Mac
• Fast: edits 10 MB files easily
• Lightweight: installer size is about 4 MB
• Extensible: seamless integration with Shortcuts and AppleScript

MarkEdit is designed to be simple and easy to use. You can also customize the UI and behavior by adding your own scripts, including utilizing CodeMirror extensions.

For example, use MarkEdit-preview to add a preview pane, and MarkEdit-theming to customize themes.

On macOS Tahoe, you can also use MarkEdit-ai-writer to effortlessly access Apple's generative language models.

To learn more, refer to Philosophy, Why MarkEdit and MarkEdit-api.

Installation

Get MarkEdit.dmg from the latest release, open it, and drag MarkEdit.app to Applications.

MarkEdit checks for updates automatically. You can also check manually via the main MarkEdit menu, or browse version history here.

If you prefer a Homebrew installation, run brew install --cask markedit in your terminal and you're all set.

We used to publish MarkEdit to the Mac App Store, but no longer. Don't worry about the security warning; releases are signed with a certificate from an identified developer and notarized.

Platform Compatibility

To be focused, we only support the latest two major macOS releases. For now, they are macOS Sequoia and macOS Tahoe.

Last-compatible version tags: macos-12, macos-13, macos-14.

Why MarkEdit is free

MarkEdit is completely free and open-source, with no advertising or promotions for other services. We make it mostly because we need it, and we ship it just in case you need it too.

Please consider starring or contributing to this project.

For everyone's convenience, MarkEdit is licensed under the MIT license. However, please don't upload the app to the Mac App Store unless you add meaningful new value (see also).

Using MarkEdit

Please refer to the wiki page for details.

Additionally, check out MarkEdit-skill if you're interested in managing MarkEdit with an AI agent.

Development

Please refer to the wiki page for details.

Contributing to MarkEdit

For bug reports, please open an issue.

For code changes, bug fixes are generally welcomed, feel free to open pull requests. However, we hesitate to add new features (why); please fork the repository and make your own.

For localization, we don't plan to add new languages, as maintaining high quality across them would be difficult for us.

Thanks in advance.

Acknowledgments

MarkEdit is built on top of the awesome CodeMirror 6 project.

MarkEdit uses ts-gyb to generate lots of boilerplate code.