Markdown Apps Loosely Joined
I recently posted about the different web browsers I regularly use, My Browser Family, and it makes sense to go through my different apps I use for Markdown in a similar way. My use is very closely tied to my Small Apps Loosely Joined mindset (part of the Shift Happed series on Personal InfoCloud). “Small apps loosely joined” focusses on having a core adaptable data structure (like markdown) and use different apps with written content where the app has helpful capabilities that are needed in a workflow or to focus on a type of work as a step in a workflow. Much like a woodworker picks up different tools to perform different tasks and doesn’t use a saw or chisel for all tasks, the small apps loosely joined model is similar. This works and has worked insanely well for 15+ years that I’ve leaned heavily on markdown.
I end up in markdown discussions rather easily it seems. The way I have taken notes in text apps with asterisks or dashes for bullets and the octothorp (you know, this thing #) for headings goes a long way back for me (starting somewhere in the 1990s). When I came across markdown in the early 2000s, after I had looked at and tried Textile Markup, but markdown didn’t fully connect. It echoed what I had done and offered more, but at the time I didn’t see the advantage of the added capabilities.
In 2010 and 2011 I started to shift much of my note taking and writing away from apps that were siloed and lock-in models. The flow from notes from a meeting, to my personal notes and annotations, and on to writing that gets shared out was a series of less than optimal apps that all had lock-in and heavy friction. Microsoft products not only had intentional lock-in but were continually buggy. I loved (and still do) Scrivener for writing longer pieces in it due to its managing notes and scraps related to the longer writing piece, but getting things in, as well as getting things out into my various sharing / publishing workflows had a lot of friction. At this time my parents were sick and passed on. When my mom passed my laptop hard drive took it as a hint and it too left the living world. I had everything backed up and I was working off the back up drive hanging off my Mac, and was waiting on a hard drive replacement, but needed something for notes for meetings (with banks, lawyers, and so much more) that I could move across everything. I nabbed an iPad for that mobility to take to meetings have files move across and back to my Mac. This tipped me into a full markdown life.
Like Many, Not All Markdown Goes to the Web
Markdown started by John Gruber to be an easy means of writing with light structure, while maintaining decent readability and to fit his model notes, which Textile didn’t fully fit. John created markdown and the markdown conversion to HTML as a matched set. Over the years many write markdown that gets converted to HTML, but around 2010 I’d see people were using markdown that never was converted to HTML. Markdown was what they wrote in as it was highly portable and editable from any text tool or markdown app and not in buggy and lock-in software. I noticed this in San Francisco on a trip where I stopped in a couple law offices to visit friends and the receptionist and legal assistants were mostly using markdown. This surprised me, as it wasn’t something I expected. Largely markdown for writing has been in tech adjacent roles and organizations. Later year seeing high school kids and college kids using markdown for their notes and paper drafts, then pasting to Google Docs was really impressive with the deftness they worked and how they managed everything. (A funny sidenote is many who went through school this way were appalled that Microsoft Word didn’t natively understand markdown). Markdown isn’t the parent’s use case any longer.
Today markdown for me only has around 20% that gets turned into HTML. Most are notes and documents that stay in markdown or turned into Google Docs, PDFs, text in Keynote presentations, and much more. Markdown is incredibly flexible with just enough structure to get converted as needed.
At First Many Apps Only Sort of Joined
This 2011 timeframe was the heyday of small light markdown apps. I picked up many apps and found a few that worked well. I was knee-deep in the markdown matrix table that Brett Terpstra maintained that showed the markdown app and the capabilities and compared what seemed like well over 60 apps. I used Simplenote, Byword, 1Writer, Ulysses, and Bear notes quite a bit and have kept them around but don’t use them as much due to friction for where and how they keep markdown files and some interfaces didn’t evolve. I also have used Working Copy, Git on iOS on Mac and iOS (iPad) for working on larger documents across devices and with others.
Moving to Less Friction for Markdown Loosely Joined
Apps that stayed around and were added in respected where I kept my notes and work. Most of the notes and writing stayed in a notes directory, but also were in project work. My notes directory on my Mac was linked out to iCloud so I could have access from my iPad or other devices. For a long stretch my basic notes app on my Mac was NVAlt, which allowed for tagging the markdown files, which meant that while they lived in my notes directory, I could aggregate all project work in the project folders, other media, and notes all with a file tag on Mac. This was fine until NVAlt stopped opening.
My Menagerie of Markdown Apps Now
My markdown notes that NVAlt sat over (which also included a folder from Notional use) had a few thousand notes when it stopped opening. But, the markdown notes weren’t owned and controlled by NVAlt and I could use nearly any markdown app I had to open and edit them. I wanted something very close to NVAlt.
Obsidian
In June 2020, after trying to find a replacement for how I worked with NVAlt I tried a few apps, but the one standout was Obsidian which slid perfectly into the exact role that NVAlt had for me. This role was to sit over the directory of notes and oversee them, but functionality on top of the markdown notes. Obsidian added even more capabilities (which most of my other markdown apps also adopted portions of over time). Obsidian is where my daily notes, drafts of longer pieces, meeting notes, and so much more go. Everything is relatively findable and refindable through backlinks (wikilinks) that are bridges between notes (but also with a plug-in Strange New Worlds - Obsidian Plugin I can see what other notes link to the note I’m linking to, and part of the magic is the note I’m pointing to doesn’t need to exist to see those links), tags to aggregate related notes with that tag, and search.
The other great advantage of Obsidian is transclusion, where one note can be added in as a view into another note. I can start a note in a meeting note or a daily note, then highlight a section and extract that section as its own note, but then transclude that note back in to show it where it was. This extraction and transclusion allows for that one piece of notes to mature and / or be included as a transclusion into other notes. The transclusions can also bring in a sub-heading into another note to show the section in the sub-heading. (I have a longer take on how and why I don’t use zettelkasten, which is similar to what I learned going into college for how to have far better study habits and write papers far more easily, but it also broke contextual understanding and really broke multiple contextual relationships).
iA Writer
My longer form markdown writing app is iA Writer. Often an idea for writing will start as something small in Obsidian (often in a larger note) and gets fleshed out a little there. But, when it starts getting longer I will extract it as its own note and then pick it up in iA Writer to take it farther. I love iA Writer as the interface is quite plain and it is just me and words and minimal structure. I often will create sub-headings early in longer pieces as outline structure to be filled in. Then it is just writing. The iA Writer app also has some light grammar checking (which fits my needs well), a quick preview to see your work as output that has some design and layout in the UI. It can be turned into a very minimal interface as well with focus on the line your cursor is on and just a few lines around that active line.
By and large, iA Writer replaced Scrivener and Ulysses as my longer writing app. The segmentation and notes capability in these other apps have made their way in as sort of similar forms into iA Writer (not everything, but enough for me). What largely caused iA Writer to replace the other two was very little friction getting my writing out into other outputs. Dragging the proxy icon to Marked (now Marked 3) is all that I need to get to HTML, styled PDF, or Word.
Marked (now Marked 3)
The Marked app, which is now in its 3rd major version, is the markdown conversion and clean-up app of choice. Marked has a lot of different capabilities, including proofing, writing statistics (like readability score and much more), writing support with proof reading, linting, and support for a wide set of markdown capabilities. Everything for using Marked for converting markdown to other formats is quite customizable and rather straight forward if you have some skills.
MarkEdit
The MarkEdit. app is one app I use as my default markdown file opener. It is like Mac’s TextEdit app, but focuses on markdown. It shows all of the markdown marks in plain sight. I find the showing everything raw is a good thing for review and understanding structure quickly.
I receive markdown files from others quite a bit, I also have access to other’s Obsidian vaults, and I have many markdown files that are spread all around my Mac and cloud environments. When opening one of these from search or a link I want to keep it outside of my Obsidian so they don’t get included and intermingled. This is really helpful reading and editing other’s shared Obsidian vaults as I can open, read, edit, and then close it while keeping clear of my Obsidian. If I want to copy something from my notes in Obsidian to another’s Obsidian, the two apps for two different environments look different, which helps reduce errors.
BBEdit
Another plain interface for markdown I use is BBEdit by Bare Bones Software, which supports markdown, but is the jack-of-all-trades text and basic coding tool. BBEdit is a go to for a lot of different text and coding needs where clearing out the cruft of an IDE or app is needed. I often open markdown documents in BBEdit when there are a lot of consistent text modifications I need to make. I have pulled in large outlines I have made in markdown and I need to do much work with nested levels in the outline.
Drafts App
I use Drafts for text and idea capture when I am away from my Mac. Everything from quick atomic notes (like where I parked, name of a book mentioned when at coffee, etc.). Drafts has long had solid voice-to-text for all Apple devices (iPhone, Watch, iPad, Mac) so it a great capture application. Drafts also has a highly adaptable capability for what to do with the note once captured, like sending it to my notes directory that Obsidian sits over. It is fully markdown capable. I can take a voice-to-text note on my Watch when driving, or invoke Siri and have it open Drafts to a blank not and tap the mic and leave a voice-to-text note that automatically is save and I can open it when I park and add some markdown elements and use and action to send it off to Obsidian, text message, or so many different end points.
iPad Apps
I started using markdown heavily, largely because my Mac hard drive crashed and I was taking notes on an iPad. I’ve gone through a lot of different iPad apps for markdown.
I have Obsidian, iA Writer, and Drafts, which I use pretty much the same way as how I use them on the Mac. Obsidian on iPad is a bit more limited, but still good for capture and modifications of notes in the directories I have it sitting over. I have Drafts always available as a slideover option off to the right of the screen.
I have Editorial for iOS as a relatively plain markdown editor. I don’t use it as much as I used to, but good to know it is there and it is quite capable.
The iPad also has small focussed apps for certain tasks. I use TextCase for changing capitalization in notes. I use Terminology by Agile Tortoise, which is the same developer as Drafts, as a really good reference tool when writing on iPad.
Trying a Couple Apps
There are a couple of apps that I’ve been trying on Mac, which may have a place. The first is Lettera, which is a markdown editor for Mac by the makers of Bear, which is currently in a limited beta. When I was using Bear notes app I loved the interface as it was clean, but what I didn’t like about Bear was the lock-in of notes in the app, as there was too much friction to use a note outside of Bear. Lettera is the markdown editor that is free of Bear. It still seems to default to a Lettera folder in iCloud, but opens markdown notes from anywhere. This may be a better reading and annotation app (it has easy to use callouts) for some of the uses I’ve used MarkEdit.
The other app is one I’m trying again as I used it 8 years ago (or so) when it was in beta and free, but became fragile, buggy, and would crash. It looked good and was rather simple. They changed from the free app to a paid app with the same name. I ended up with two versions with the same app with the icon and it was difficult to discern which was the flakey app and which was the good. Once the good version became pay, so I had neither working. This was Typora. In recent months many new to markdown have been talking about Typora and I get asked about it. Today I finally downloaded it again after deleting both of my instances of it a few years ago.
The current Typora has a lot of capabilities now, far beyond what it used to have. It has a similar interface, until you open settings then it has a lot of customizations. Typora can now cover a lot of ground. Much of it is covered in other apps I have, but I may find my current model of having different apps for different uses that are incredibly good for the purpose I use them is my preferred way of working. Having different apps helps me focus on what I am doing in that app to the markdown file and the task and focus needed from me for that task. To get to the same thing in Typora I would have to go to settings and make changes to keep that focus, but the context of the different app isn’t there. Moving between apps I will also keep the markdown file in multiple apps and see an edit in one instantly show in all the other apps (what good magic is this). Typora nice interface with additions for math UI (through LaTex) and charts (through Mermaid) may be a draw to keep it around.