Top-rated on Setapp
Now I'm here to be the voice of Markdown.
I prefer writing in Markdown over using WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors for all my work, especially at the draft stage, whether it's articles, copy for website, advertising, or video scripts.
Markdown lets you style the text as you go and quickly flesh out ideas, without getting distracted with manual visual adjustments, which can be dealt with later.
Let's start with a quick overview. You'll find more details below.
| App | Best for | Key features | Price |
| Ulysses | All-round writing | Markdown, distraction-free, one-click publishing | Included in Setapp Membership |
| Craft | Multimedia notes | Images and video, collaboration, 50 GB storage | Included in Setapp Membership |
| iA Writer | Design-minded writing | Focus mode, style highlights, custom fonts | $49.99 one-time |
| Bear | Markdown note-taking | Visual styling, tags, locked notes | Free; from $2.99/mo |
| MarsEdit | Blog publishing | HTML support, WordPress/Tumblr, local backup | Included in Setapp Membership |
| Bike | Structured outlining | Fast outliner, deep links, typewriter mode | Included in Setapp Membership |
| MonsterWriter | Complex documents | Footnotes, LaTeX, bibliography, PDF/HTML export | Included in Setapp Membership, and available on Setapp Marketplace from $4.99/mo |
| MacMD Viewer | Reading .md output | Finder Quick Look, live reload, Mermaid, ~10 MB | Available on Setapp Marketplace for $19.99 |
Let's dive into why you should give Markdown a try and list the best Markdown editors available on Mac.
Markdown is a simple markup language used for formatting plain-text documents. Created in 2004 by John Gruber (Daring Fireball), Markdown was meant to be a tool for writers that styled plain-text documents and automatically converted them into HTML when published.
Unlike HTML, which is also a markup language, Markdown features less intrusive tags that make the text much easier to read. For example, Markdown uses # for H1 headers as opposed to in HTML.
Since Markdown is only meant to style plain text, it's not as expansive of a language as HTML. However, all HTML is valid Markdown, so writers who find some features lacking in Markdown can simply write them in HTML.
Gruber explains the difference between Markdown and HTML in this way:
"The idea for Markdown is to make it easy to read, write, and edit prose. HTML is a publishing format; Markdown is a writing format".
Lately, there's been a rise in light Markdown editors that offer minimalist writing environments as opposed to feature-heavy ones like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. While Markdown has everything you need to publish simple documents, you can just use Markdown for drafts and move to word processors for rich text editing.
Read also:
When it comes to choosing the best Markdown editor for Mac, there are lots of options, each tailored to a different workflow, from note-taking apps to text editors to web publishing tools. Here is a list of my favorite desktop Markdown editors for Mac today.
While most Markdown apps focus on one part of the writing process, such as drafting or pre-publishing, Ulysses does it all: it works as a note-taking companion for research and quotes, a light project manager with interlinked documents, and a professional writing environment for anything from blog posts to novels. The interface stays minimalist and out of the way, native Markdown means you style everything with a few keyboard shortcuts, and you can publish straight to WordPress or Medium or export to PDF and other formats.
If you value word-of-mouth recommendations on writing tools, Ulysses comes highly praised by Setapp users. Margaux Yiu, a Setapp user, remarked:
“Has been super-useful for keeping multiple writing projects organised for school, work, blogging, and scrap notes. Having this app available both on the laptop (main computer) and iPad is one of the best features.”
Reduced styling options compared to word processors
macOS, iOS
When you're working in a powerful editor for Markdown like Ulysses, one of the things you'll notice is that your styling doesn't get reflected in the Markdown document in real time. You need to preview or export your text to see the styling effects. If you want to see your document changing as you type, use Marked.
Marked offers live Markdown preview for any text editor you choose, along with lots of other tools like word count, readability analysis, checking grammar, passive voice detection, and more.
To get Marked working, simply open the same text file in both Marked and your feature-rich Markdown editor at the same time.
Rather than being one of the pure Markdown mobile editors, Craft incorporates all the benefits of Markdown into an app that supports complex design structures, from interactive webpages to corporate directories.
Craft makes it easy to link text components to each other, organize files into folders, and create master documents. Unlike other plain-text Markdown alternatives, Craft supports images and videos, and provides 50 GB of cloud storage for its customers. Sharing, collaborating, and commenting on files is also included.
Brian McMurray, a Setapp user, writes about Craft:
“Exactly what I was looking for! Replaces Apple Notes for me and allows me to do much more complex things. Great note-taking and page building app. Fun and cool interface, great app!”
One of the apps for writing Markdown that I truly love is iA Writer. Created by the iA design agency, it keeps only the essentials for a genuinely distraction-free environment: there's no inline image support, custom fonts, or complex library structures, but you do get a focus mode, three beautiful fonts designed from scratch, syntax highlighting, wikilinks between files, a file library, and iCloud sync.
One Redditor shared their experience, saying:
“I can vouch for this as an excellent app — used it on macOS and iPhone for about a decade.”
However, they also pointed out:
“But it's just so damn expensive on Mac,”
That highlights a common concern among users considering the investment for this writing tool. Despite the cost, many Redditors find that iA Writer’s functionality and simplicity make it worth the price for serious writers.
Since Markdown is often used for sketches and drafts, it's not surprising that it also works well for notes. Bear is an award-winning Markdown note-taking app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad that lets you write everything with Markdown but also visually changes the text as you style it, creating beautiful plain-text notes as a result.
Besides Markdown support, Bear features a built-in library with support for tags, OCR search, exports in various formats, image cropping, note outlines, sketches, locked notes, custom themes, and more.
A Redditor says about Bear,
"Bear is my primary note taking app for everything from work project notes to video game theory crafting notes. I live in Markdown so I can compose things in Bear and turn them into PDFs or DOCX or whatever as needed. I have it open all the time, every day, and I even do things like compose reddit posts in it."
It might be that the best Markdown editor online publishers use is MarsEdit. This app allows you to compose blog posts or any other writing destined for the web offline, without relying on your CMS.
With MarsEdit, you can write your content in Markdown both as plain-text or rich-text files, or even full-blown HTML. You get real-time previews (with customized templates) and native integration with various blogging platforms, such as WordPress, MetaWeblog, and AtomPub. All types of media files and attachments are also supported. Finally, you never lose your progress in MarsEdit, as all your content gets backed up in a separate folder on your Mac.
Being specific to web publishing
macOS
Truth be told, there's no magic in Markdown per se. That's why in your search for the best Markdown editor, it's worth considering apps that are Markdown-inspired while not strictly following all of its syntax.
Bike is a lightweight and fast outliner that works for everything from spontaneous ideas to structured projects and detailed research papers. It uses a rich text editor but displays text in a Markdown-like style for headings, lists, blockquotes, and code, and rounds things out with a typewriter mode to help you focus, deep links for connecting separate notes, and text stats.
No built-in file library
macOS
One of the areas where most desktop Markdown editors miss the mark is complex text documents with footnotes, tables of contents, bibliographies, and LaTeX math notation.
MonsterWriter solves this by breaking a document into components you can manage, organize, and cross-reference on the fly with Markdown-inspired keyboard shortcuts, and it adds a backup tool plus export to PDF, LaTeX, and HTML.
In my personal experience, I needed to compile a research paper that required meticulous organization of bibliographic entries and complex mathematical formulas. MonsterWriter was invaluable — it simplified the process, letting me focus on the content rather than wrestling with formatting issues. Plus, the backup tool and export options to PDFs, LaTeX, and HTML provided the flexibility I needed to present my work professionally.
"I write a lot of deep-dive app reviews, and MonsterWriter is perfect for keeping everything organized without the usual formatting chaos. It’s clean, fast, and lets me focus on the content. Plus, exporting to PDF or HTML is super easy when it’s time to publish", shares Olha Novitska, content writer, expert iOS and Mac app reviewer at Setapp."
macOS
Here's a problem I didn't have a few years ago: most of the Markdown I read now, I didn't write. Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and Copilot all hand back .md files by default, and my Mac still opens them in TextEdit as a wall of raw hashes and asterisks. MacMD Viewer fills that gap.
It's worth being clear about what it is, though: a reader, not an editor. It doesn't give you a writing surface and isn't trying to replace Ulysses or iA Writer. You keep writing wherever you already write, and MacMD Viewer just renders the result cleanly, the way Preview handles PDFs.
The feature I lean on most is Quick Look: select any .md file in Finder, press Space, and you get the rendered version instead of the source, with headings, tables, and code in place (it works in Spotlight too). When a file is open, live reload keeps the preview in sync the moment my editor or Claude saves, which helps when an AI tool keeps overwriting the same output file. It renders GitHub-flavored Markdown properly, so syntax-highlighted code, real tables, and Mermaid diagrams draw inline, with a sidebar outline that tracks your place as you scroll and light and dark themes to match your setup.
"Surprised by how well the app fits with my evolving AI coding setup. Well thought product”, – Aldo Bergamini, a Setapp user.
No editing, since it's a reader by design
macOS (14+, Apple Silicon and Intel)
Scanning through the above, you can see that Markdown editors tend to come in all kinds of flavors and tailor to a variety of audiences.
Ulysses is as close as you can get to an all-around Markdown editor. Craft offers lots of multimedia support. MarsEdit helps with online publishing. Bike makes structuring ideas easy. And MonsterWriter takes care of complex documents. And when you just need to read a .md file that someone (or something) else wrote, MacMD Viewer renders it cleanly without opening an editor.
Ulysses, Craft, MarsEdit, Bike, and MonsterWriter are all part of Setapp Membership, one subscription covering a whole library of best-in-class Mac and iOS apps. You can try the whole library free for 7 days, keep whatever earns its place, and cancel anytime.
MacMD Viewer is a standalone app on Setapp Marketplace, a one-time $19.99 purchase rather than part of the membership, so you can grab it on its own whenever you want a clean reader sitting next to your editor.
There's no single winner; it depends on your job. Ulysses is the strongest all-rounder, iA Writer suits minimalist writers, Craft adds images and collaboration, MarsEdit handles blog publishing, Bike is great for outlining, and MonsterWriter manages long academic documents. If you only need to read Markdown, use a viewer like MacMD Viewer instead.
An editor gives you a surface to write and format Markdown, like Ulysses or iA Writer. A viewer only renders finished .md files for reading, with no editing. MacMD Viewer is a good example: think Preview for PDFs, but for Markdown. Most people keep an editor for writing and add a viewer to read output cleanly.
Install a Markdown viewer that renders the file. With MacMD Viewer, you press Space on any .md file in Finder and get a rendered Quick Look preview instead of raw syntax, and it works in Spotlight too. If you want a live preview beside your editor while you write, Marked updates every time you save.
Yes. Ulysses, Craft, Marked, MarsEdit, Bike, and MonsterWriter are part of Setapp Membership, so you can try the whole library free for 7 days and cancel anytime. MacMD Viewer is a standalone one-time purchase on Setapp Marketplace rather than part of the trial.
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