Switcher 2026: Markdown Editors ⭐️

I use Markdown for all writing and Typora is my weapon of choice. But there are all kinds of alternatives out there. And some of them are worth knowing about.

📝 Why Markdown

I watch a lot of personal technology videos on YouTube, as you might imagine, and so my feed sometimes tosses out serendipitous content like this one, in which a professional writer goes through a list of mostly obvious Microsoft Word alternatives. I had never heard of this guy or his channel, but it’s thoughtful and not a screed in any way. And God help me, I watched/listened to the whole thing. I guess you’d say it’s in my wheelhouse.

I always needed a word processor, of course, and when I became a professional writer in the early 1990s, Microsoft Word was pretty much the choice as it was the best word processor and publishing companies not only required its use but also very specific templates that aided them during the then-lengthy editing process. So Microsoft Word holds an interesting place in my personal history with technology. I aspired to using it early on, and then I used it for decades. But even early on, I was acutely aware that I was using only a tiny fraction of its features. And as familiarity grew, I wanted something simpler.

That, in essence, is what the video linked above is about. Not so much that Word is “bloated,” slow, or complex or whatever, but rather an acknowledgment that writers, like so many others, simply want to get the job done without distractions. This is the problem I wrote about in The Shortest Path from Thoughts to Words (Premium) and elsewhere, and it describes my slow but steady migration from Word and its document formats to Markdown.

As you may know, I may write a book about Markdown, and since publishing that first chapter/article, I’ve blocked out a few other chapters. I’ve also decided to better frame this thing as “Markdown for writers” specifically, which was always my intent but perhaps needed to be more explicit. If you think about the act of writing, there is the blurting out of words on the screen, which I am very good at, and then a fine-tuning or editing process through which you finalize that thing and then publish it. Which I am less good at.

But here, I came to understand early on that things were changing. I may have wanted a simpler tool than Word, say, 20 years ago, but Word was the thing that was supported everywhere, from the publishers who made the books I wrote to the magazine I contributed to and the web forms I used to paste and publish the articles I wrote. Technology has always moved quickly, and so by the late 2000s, I was trying to convince my book publisher to embrace eBooks that could be updated as needed, something that’s impossible when you commit to paper. After a lot of push and pull, I eventually dropped them and started self-publishing.

This changed my workflow quite a bit, and thanks to Rafael, I learned about Markdown and started using (what is now a basically unsupported) app called MarkdownPad 2 to write books. And only books, at first. I continued using Word for web articles and whatever I was writing for Penton, which published the magazine once called Windows NT Magazine. That relationship ended in late 2014, after that magazine ceased to exist in paper form.

And so I spent years considering using only Markdown while experimenting with various Markdown editors before finally transitioning fully. I can’t even remember the last time I launched Microsoft Word or needed to use it. It was such a major part of my daily life for so long that I feel vaguely unsettled just writing that. But then I remember what Word is like and I’m at peace. I don’t want or need it.

⌨ Types of Markdown editors

In the article linked above, I describe a few Markdown editors that I’ve used over the years, like Typora, iA Writer, and even Visual Studio Code. Today, I pretty much just use Typora, but I still keep looking for alternatives, and the why and what of that are described below. First, I want to focus on an important but more general consideration when it comes to writing with Markdown.

As I noted in Anthropic Engineer Debates Use of Markdown vs. HTML in AI Agent Output, John Gruber’s intent in creating Markdown was to use plain text with simple formatting syntax for writing and then output the work to HTML because that’s where his words were published. With that in mind, there are basically three different ways that an editor can support Markdown, though it’s not exact:

Plain text editor. If you open a Markdown document in a plain text editor that doesn’t understand this syntax, it simply displays the text as it was written, so it can include characters like #, *, -, and others that tell a compatible Markdown parser how to format those parts of the document. Some Markdown editors will switch between two view modes, then, including a plain text editor display as per above and then what’s usually called a Preview mode in which you can see the document formatted using HTML.

Side-by-side Markdown editor. That (basically unsupported) MarkdownPad 2 app I noted earlier used a side-by-side view in which a document could be displayed in two panes, with the plain text view on the left, where you write, and the preview on the right, which is view-only. This is odd looking at first, but it lets you see the preview output in real-time rather than forcing you to toggle in and out of it as with a plain text Markdown editor. This was a common layout style for Markdown editors years ago, and you can still find them out there. But it’s less common today.

Word processor-style Markdown editor. Typora takes this approach, in which you can type Markdown syntax, type keyboard shortcuts, or select formatting commands from a toolbar or menu, and the app provides a WYSIWYG, word processor-style experience as you type. So it looks formatted to whatever degree as you write, and many of the Markdown syntax characters are hidden by default. In Typora, for example, I can type Ctrl + B to bold some text just like in Microsoft Word, but I can also type the Markdown ** to begin a bolded text section and then type that again to end it. When I’m done formatting, that text appears bolded in Typora, just as it would in Word.

Some apps offer hybrid approaches. iA Writer is a good example: It is basically a plain text Markdown editor in that it always displays Markdown syntax inline in documents like a plain text editor. But it also applies styles in many cases. Bolded text, to continue that example, displays the ** characters that denotes the beginning and end of bolded text. But it also bolds that text visually. I sort of like that, to be honest, but I very much prefer Typora.

I mentioned this isn’t exact.

Technically, Typora is also a hybrid Markdown editor: Heading styles do not display with styles, but retain the # notations for some reason. But this is an exception, as most other formatting looks like it would in a word processor.

Also, you may be aware that Notepad in Windows 11 now supports “light formatting,” which is Microsoft’s way of saying that it supports Markdown (and, go figure, Markdown syntax in any text document, including those with a .txt extension). So when you open or create a Markdown document in Notepad, it displys a formatting toolbar and that document is formatted like a word processing document. Including even the headlines, unlike with Typora.

I don’t like this, honestly: I would like to edit the styles used by headings, especially, as they’re too big, and it doesn’t handle line breaks like Typora by default. (Neither does iA Write, go figure.) But maybe that all changes down the road and I could actually use Notepad for writing. What a world.

✍️ Why Typora

Typora is special, and it’s my favorite Markdown editor. But like everything else in life, Typora isn’t perfect. And in part because this is what I do all the time, I actively try to replace it. So far, it has withstood all challenges, but that could change.

What makes Typora so special? A lot of it boils down to its word processor-like approach. I don’t use or need toolbars of command buttons, and Typora doesn’t offer them. What it does offer is a full selection of keyboard shortcuts that work the same as they do in Word in other word processors. That is, if I want to bold text, I can use Ctrl + B, and if I want to insert a hyperlink, I can use Ctrl + K as God (or at least Microsoft and my muscle memory) intends.

Inserting a hyperlink is another Typora strength. Bear with me on this one, as it requires a bit of explanation. Let’s say I type the word Apple and want to create a link so that one could click that word and go to the Apple website. To do so, I use a web browser to navigate to Apple’s website, select the address (Ctrl + L), copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl + C), and then switch to whatever app I’m using to write. In Word or another word processor, in Typora, in WordPress when I’m posting something to this site, and just about everywhere, I can then select the word Apple and type Ctrl + K to create that hyperlink.

Everywhere but Typora, this requires multiple steps. Typing Ctrl + K is the first step: It opens a little window with a text field that lets me paste in that text (Ctrl + V), after which I have to tap Enter too. That’s three steps: Ctrl + K, Ctrl + V, and then Enter.

Typora is simpler and more efficient and is thus better. I select the text and type Ctrl + K and it just creates the hyperlink. There’s no little window, no need to tap Enter. It’s one step. It just happens. I love that. And I miss it everywhere else.

🤬 Why bother replacing Typora?

If Typora is so special, why would I even consider replacing it? Multiple reasons, some of which are specific to my stupid life. For example, I used many dozens of PCs every year, and I install and configure Typora on all of them. But Typora doesn’t just let me use the damn app, I have to activate it with a key too. And you can only have three active installs out in the world at a time. As I move from computer to computer, I routinely need to reactivate Typora, which requires me to find the key each time, and type in my email address twice for some reason. It’s not the end of the world, but it is annoying.

Beyond that, Typora isn’t free. This isn’t a blocker for me, I did pay for it, but there are free alternatives out there and some are good to excellent. Typora is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, which is good, but it’s not on mobile, and that is becoming more of an issue as those platforms mature. One can of course use a different app on mobile, iA Writer is on iPhone/iPad, for example, but not Android, for example. But that, too, speaks to the need for alternatives.

Typora also isn’t open source, if that’s an issue. That doesn’t bother me per se, but as I move more into Linux, I can see where that might be an issue for others.

By the way, I did contact Typora to see whether I could pay them more for a universal license that could just activate and work without this silliness. Understandably, the answer was no, for all the obvious reasons. Ah well.

✏️ Markdown editor alternatives

If you can’t use Typora or don’t want to pay for it, there are many other Markdown editors out there, including lots of free options. The two most obvious choices are MarkText and Ghostwriter. Neither is perfect, nothing is, but both can be workable depending on your needs.

MarkText is a word processor-style Markdown editor. It’s open source and it’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It’s about as minimalist as this kind of app can be, with no toolbars, though you can enable a sidebar. I’ve only had one issue with it, and only on the Mac: macOS blocks MarkText from running after first install because the app lacks a paid Apple Developer Signature, which triggers an error dialog claiming that the app is “damaged” or made by an “unidentified developer.” I Googled that, of course, and found that the following command line in Terminal fixes the issue (oddly without needing sudo):

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/MarkText.app

Ghostwriter is a plain text style Markdown editor, with two twists: Though it displays Markdown syntax characters, it colorizes them, and you can switch to a side-by-side preview view too. It’s open source and available for Windows and Linux, and you can get it on the Mac if you don’t mind building it yourself from the source code. After which time, you have to put up with a few quirks, according to its maker. The lack of an installer does make this less appealing on the Mac, obviously.

Beyond these, I’ve been looking at some other alternatives.

Zettlr is free and open source, supports word processor-style editing, is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and natively supports LanguageTool, the AI-based spelling/grammar checker I use plus some other unique features.

Typedown is Windows only, but you can get it from the Microsoft Store. I guess I’m more in a cross-platform mode at this point, but if you’re sticking 100 percent to Windows, it’s perhaps worth looking at.

Speaking of which…

🗄️ Things that are not Markdown editors

I use Markdown for writing and currenty use and prefer using a standalone editor for that. But Markdown is everywhere, it seems. Many apps can export or import into Markdown, and many other apps and app types support it or at least Markdown syntax directly. And some of them are not editors, or similar apps like word processors.

The most obvious example is Notion, another app I love and use daily and yet have been trying to replace for years. In fact, I will cover Notion alternatives soon in another article in this series. But here’s something interesting to consider: You can use Markdown syntax when typing into Notion, as I do, and you could just use it as a standalone Markdown editor, with a few caveats: You have to deal with the complexities of Notion, which is so much more than a note-taking app or text editor. It’s free, which is nice. But it’s also opaque, doesn’t work offline elegantly, and doesn’t use Markdown files under the covers. It’s a black box. But again, I will get to all that in the Notion article soon.

Looking past the obvious Notion alternatives–Obsidian, Joplin, you know the drill–there are some note-taking, Notion alternatives that are simple enough to consider just for writing in Markdown. For example, I only recently became aware of Beaver Notes, and while it goes well beyond straight-up note-taking or editing, it looks interesting.

I don’t know. Right now, I very much prefer creating and saving individual Markdown files with a standalone editor. And right now, for me, that editor is Typora. But we’ll see where this year takes me. And, who knows, mabye you too.