
Typora: A truly minimal markdown editor - shinvee
https://typora.io/
======
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](https://github.com/marktext/marktext)

~~~
stanislavb
Also, here it is a list with even more alternatives
[https://www.saashub.com/typora-alternatives](https://www.saashub.com/typora-
alternatives)

~~~
yboris
I also love the _AlternativeTo_ as a resource for alternatives:

[https://alternativeto.net/software/typora/](https://alternativeto.net/software/typora/)

------
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](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](https://bear.app) is my favourite
so long as you're on an Apple device.

I will also be interested in [https://nvultra.com/](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...](https://davidmytton.blog/the-best-note-taking-apps-
for-mac-markdown-open-format-cross-platform/)

~~~
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)

~~~
mikewhy
> Typora is not a notes manger, and reviewing it for what it's not trying to
> be, is unfair.

From the site:

"Typora provides both file tree panel and articles (file list) panel, allows
you to manage your files easily."

~~~
throwGuardian
Yes - a feature of the editor is that it shows a file list panel for the
directory the .md file is in. I'm not seeing that as "We're a notes app"

------
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=yzhang.markdown-
all-in-one)

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=mushan.v...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=mushan.vscode-
paste-image)

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/](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.

------
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...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/writing-and-previewing-
markdown-in-real-time-with-vim-8)

~~~
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.

~~~
nickjj
If you use a live preview plugin with your code editor you can choose not to
look at the code and focus on the rendering of it in a browser.

~~~
ScottFree
Why would I do that when I can edit the rendered version directly?

~~~
nickjj
One benefit I guess is you don't need a dedicated program and you can continue
using your code editor. You also have full control of what the render looks
like (which is helpful for GitHub READMEs).

Also with Vim (I can't speak for other editors) it has the option of
concealing the markdown characters themselves so it looks more like a
rendering of it. I don't use that personally but if you prefer not seeing the
noise of backticks for code blocks or double asterisks for bold you can hide
it.

~~~
ScottFree
You don't seem to be getting the point. Vim is for code. Typora is for
documents. They are different tools tailored specifically for different jobs.
You wouldn't use microsoft word to write code, would you?

If you like vim and want to use it for markdown, that's great. I personally
like a more specialized tool. Then again, I'm also a writer and spend more
time in that mode than most programmers. If you spend all your time
programming and only occasionally need to write a markdown document, then I
can see the appeal of the setup you're describing.

~~~
nickjj
I spend about 50% of my time programming and 50% writing. I often deal with
300,000+ word markdown files because part of what I do for a living is write
technical courses. I've written about a million words of markdown over the
last ~5 years.

~~~
ScottFree
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ different strokes for different folks, man. Most of what I write is
fiction. Some of that fiction also serves as functional requirement documents.
:D

------
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.

------
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/](https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/)

² [https://github.com/michelolvera/vs-
ghostwriter](https://github.com/michelolvera/vs-ghostwriter)

~~~
app4soft
Ghostwriter depend on QtWebKit/QtWebEngine, so is not JavaScript-free.

> HTML preview has been ported from QtWebKit to QtWebEngine (Chromium).

~~~
bchanudet
Yeah the HTML preview is using QtWebEngine, but not the text editor part.

I suppose there is a way to deactivate Javascript execution in QtWebEngine but
I don't know enough about it. But given that Markdown allows inline HTML and
JavaScript, I don't see how you could have an accurate WYSIWYG representation
if you don't have a Javascript engine available somewhere.

------
cik
I'm happier with retext ([https://github.com/retext-
project/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](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.

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

~~~
swebs
I don't remember that at all. Are you sure you're not thinking of emacs?

~~~
brazzy
Nope, definitely vi. I have a vintage book about Unix written ca. 1980, and
the author's concern was that "vi's code segment will fill up most of the main
memory of a large PDP-11, leaving you little space for the text you're
editing". They considered their university's heavily modified fork of ed (the
standard text editor, remember?) to be a better choice.

~~~
mceachen
FWIW, by 1988 the shared servers on UC campuses were sufficiently provisioned
to happily run vi, compiler toolchains, and MUDs for several hundred
concurrent users.

------
CareyB
Wow! WordPerfect reimagined.

------
mwexler
I keep coming back to simplenote
([https://app.simplenote.com/](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

------
esher
Been using Typora for almost two years. Really like it. Use cases might be a
bit limited.

Using Notion.so on work.

------
hcarvalhoalves
I like the WYSIWYG and there's a handful of useful features, good job!

