Some Markdown editors provide a preview of the rendered document in real time when writing or editing, which reduces the number of times you need to render your work externally to proof for markup mistakes. Generally, Markdown won’t be the final destination format of your piece of work, so you’ll need a tool that can convert Markdown to a richly formatted document such as HTML, Word, or PDF, which can be customized along the way via CSS or other display formatters. You might be asking, “Do I really need a Markdown editor? Can’t I just use any old plain-text editor?” The team and I are now officially Markdown junkies! :] Once you start using Markdown, you’ll get addicted.

For example, we use it here at to create our books, using a custom tool we wrote that converts Markdown into book PDFs. You’ll find support for Markdown in many tools, workflows, and web sites. I can create a document on my MacBook and edit on my Windows machine or iPad without worrying about cross-platform issues. Since a Markdown document is just a text document, any text editor can create and edit Markdown documents. Markdown quickly became my preferred writing format because it helps me stay focused on recording my thoughts and ideas quickly and efficiently. I discovered Markdown the same way I suspect many developers did - through its use on GitHub, which uses Markdown to format issues, comments, and pull request descriptions.

Getting Startedīefore we dive into the top 5 Markdown editors, let’s talk about why you should use Markdown in the first place, and why you need a Markdown editor at all. Note: For the sake of this article, we are calling an “editor” any tool that allows you to edit or render Markdown (not necessarily both).

Macdown app