[MAC] Editorio — native macOS markdown + code editor, free forever
Dev here, 20 years in. Built Editorio for myself a while back because nothing on the mac did everything I wanted in one place. It's polished enough now that I figured I'd share it. Subscription text editor. Subscription notes app. Subscription markdown previewer. (lol). We live in the future. Macs have neural engines, and the industry's answer to "I want a nice text editor" is 4.99/month to render # heading as bold text. Cool. Problem Most Mac markdown editors are either Electron bloatware (500MB+ RAM, slow cold start) or behind a subscription / one-time fee just to render basic markdown. And most code editors don't do markdown preview well. I wanted one fast native app that handles both: markdown writing AND code files, without paying rent on a monospace font. Comparison vs Typora: Typora is 14.99 USD one-time and not native AppKit. Editorio is free and native, opens files in under 100ms. vs iA Writer: iA Writer is ~50 USD and writing-focused. Editorio also handles 180+ programming languages with syntax highlighting, so it doubles as a code editor. vs VS Code: VS Code is Electron, ~500MB RAM, slow cold start. You don't need a full IDE just to open a markdown file or peek at some code. Editorio is ~40MB RAM, native AppKit, instant launch. vs Sublime Text: Sublime is 99 USD per license and still doesn't do real markdown preview out of the box. Editorio is free and ships with live markdown preview built in. Pricing Free. Forever. No nag, no asterisk, no "free for personal use only". https://editorio.crncevic.org https://apps.apple.com/app/editorio/id6759334075 What's in it: Markdown editor with live preview Code editor with syntax highlighting (swift, py, ts, rust, etc.) Mac native, AppKit. No Electron, no web views Light/dark themes, minimap, tabs ~40MB RAM, lightning fast Me posting to reddit is the entire marketing budget. Already gave Apple my 100 bucks for the dev account, so if you actually like it, send it to a friend or drop it in a Slack somewhere. Planning to open source it on github too once I clean up the repo. Long live free apps instead of charging rent on a monospace font. Edit: since so many of you keep insisting... yes, fine, you can buy me a coffee. I'm genuinely a little embarrassed about it, but here we are.
Collected discussion
Hey everyone, This absolutely exploded - I didn't expect this level of support at all. Just so you know, I'm also debugging a 3 year old and a 1 month old in my free time, so whatever extra time I get I'll be polishing this for you. This version shipped with a bug that's already fixed - just waiting on Apple to review it. You can expect it live tomorrow. Sorry for any bugs you run into. Just keep them coming as you find them - there's a ticketing link in the app's about section. Thanks everyone.
And since so many of you keep insisting... yes, fine, you can buy me a coffee. I'm genuinely a little embarrassed about it, but here we are.
Just curious, What made you switch the app from paid to free ?
That was just me trying to recoup the 100 bucks Apple charges for the dev account. Felt gross, made it free. Rather contribute something useful.
Waiting for the open source GH repo :)
Once I publish it, I'll add it to the app's about section. I'm looking forward to getting contributions and seeing forks (:
Does the live preview also work in Mac Quicklook ?
No, but - noted, I'll add this as a feature request. Thanks.
New alternative for Notepad++ ? ;)
Not even close. (it's a long shot) Notepad++ is an MVP in the world of editors.
Oh I’ve been looking for this want wanted to create it myself. Thank you for already doing it! 💖
Not sure what's going on but I installed it, played around a bit with the settings, and then it suddenly closed. Then I opened a markdown file and it crashes over and over. It's around 80kb if that matters
Thanks for this. I’ll take a look at it. Needless to say I’ve been the only one using it so far and any feedback is more than welcome. There is support/ tickets section when you go to the about section of the app. If you run into any new bugs, please post it there and I promise to resolve it. Edit: fixed, please update
First of all, looks great in the photos! Will definitely install it when I get back to my Mac. I think you could at least turn the in-app purchase into donations. That way some of us will chip in 😊 I mean revenue didn’t hurt anyone I know 😉 Now this is a general question and slightly off-topic: When devs open-source their code, what’s stopping someone from taking the code, compiling it and selling it under their name? Sure, some user/researcher might dig in and expose them, but most people won’t ever find out. So, what’s the benefit of open-sourcing?
Thank you! GitHub and app stores have DMCA takedown processes that work quickly. Plus, developers' reputations matter in tech communities, and getting caught...well.. On the bright side, you get free contributions, bug fixes, and improvements from other developers who can see exactly what you're doing. It's not perfect, but it actually offers more positives.
What is it using under the hood? CodeMirror?
Native AppKit + NSTextView with a custom incremental tokenizer. For languages (180+), I use Highlightr (a Swift wrapper around highlight.js -no web view needed) just to tokenize the code, then map those tokens to colors based on the theme. No CodeMirror, no Monaco, no Electron involved.
Quick , read the rules before Auto-Mod is here
Thanks for the heads up. Edited into PCP format.
Thanks for making this free. One quick question: does it handle large files okay? My main gripe with most "lightweight" native editors is they choke the second you open a 50 MB log file or a big JSON dump, which is exactly when you don't want to spin up VS Code.
Thanks for your contribution, but if I may be so bold, that icon could use some work 😄
Thank you! Do I hear a contribution? :D
Is syntax highlighting coming from treesitter?
No. Syntax highlighting comes from Highlightr, which is a Swift wrapper around highlight.js
This is great. I just opened Sublime 3 for the first time in ages and was told it wouldn't work on future versions of MacOS. I always felt pretty disappointed I bought Sublime 3 and they turned around and charged me for Sublime 4 so I never moved to it. VS Code is just so heavy to quickly take a note of something if it isn't already open. Now I've got a free alternative, thanks!