Into The Rabbit Hole of Markdown Editors

When I started writing, I started working in Pages. The general-use word processor provided by Apple was my preferred choice in college because writing papers in Pages seemed to, well, make sense. It was satisfactory for the time being; I could write and format the way I wanted to, save my work in a designated folder, and Pages had the functionality I needed.

Needless to say, soon after my tenth article, I thought there had to be something better. I grew tired of manually hyperlinking everything in Pages. I grew tired of actually bulleting items in Pages. I grew tired of the constant crashes of Pages. I grew tired of Pages.

Writing became such an enjoyment to me within the last couple of months, mostly because it brings me solace and gives me the peace of mind I need. Writing and programming are the two productive things that captivate my creativity; I say productive because I could spend all day with my attention directed towards YouTube or Netflix without getting anything accomplished. I knew there was no alternative to Xcode—besides maybe CodeRunner, but it was never to be as powerful as Xcode—but there were plenty of alternatives to Pages. Little did I know that plenty would turn out to be many. I couldn't use Sublime Text because I used that for front-end web development, and I did not want to mix the two.

So I sought out to find a better experience, an experience that delighted me as much as the writing did and continues to every day. I assumed there had to be something that captivated my passion for writing—something more efficient than common plain text or even formatted text. That's how I stumbled upon Markdown. It was quick, efficient, and ultimately the preferred choice for blogging. I knew so because John Gruber created and used it, Federico Viticci used it, and my friend and colleague Amit Jain recommended and used it. At the time, it was unknown to me that Markdown was actually "the norm" for blogging. So Markdown was the platform, but what Markdown editor to use?

I never realized that question would send me down a rabbit hole with no true ending. To this day, I still find myself experimenting with text editors. There are no clear-cut winners in OS X writing besides possibly Sublime Text—but like I said, I wanted to reserve it for web development. As I plundered deeper, I found more editors to evaluate. Regardless, I went further down the rabbit hole.

This is my adventure into the rabbit hole—my deep dive into Markdown editors.

Notes

This is mostly Mac-centric. When I use iA Writer Pro on the Mac, I use iA Writer Pro on iOS because of the iCloud Drive syncing—I know, shocking. They work without friction together during the time of my writing, something also quite shocking.

This is ordered chronologically. I could have written something along the lines of "My Favorite Markdown Editor" or "Top Markdown Editors," but I wanted to make it a little more personal.

As I tried to make it as personal as possible, I also wanted to make it objective. This goes without saying: there is some arbitrary reasoning behind my writing workflows and preferred text editor. I will get to those later, and describe my reasoning.

That said, let us start with my first Markdown editor: iA Writer.

iA Writer

As I started searching for Markdown editors, my first stop was iA Writer. It was the first writing app I stumbled upon on my iPhone—it happened to permeate over to my MacBook. However, iA Writer was short-lived in my writing career.

I loved the ideology of iA Writer: simple, elegant, and left me just to write. The support for Markdown was exactly what I wanted. I found myself enjoying the simplicity of it. There was nothing to see apart from the writing, the statistics, and formatting options.

The ultimate downfall is an arbitrary one yet one that I strongly support: the aesthetics. iA Writer had only one option for font and one color scheme. The font may be a very diminutive, arbitrary reason to leave a text editor, but when you write so much (multiple hours a day), the font starts to wear on you.

Using iA Writer for an extensive time, I had the urge for change. The simplicity was great and robust—but there was something else out there. I knew that iA Writer was always there if I wanted to retreat back, but with the time being I sought after a better writing tool.

I did not completely leave iA Writer; I only transitioned from iA Writer to iA Writer Pro.

iA Writer Pro

I really enjoyed iA Writer, and still do to this day. Its simplicity and elegance is something that I find unmatched to any other writing apps. There were many different things I loved about iA Writer Pro, making me happy with the switch.

From the start, I really enjoyed the different formats known as Workflows. The Workflows break down into four categories: Note, Write, Edit, and Read. The Note and Write Workflows were respectively dedicated to note-taking and writing, while the Edit and Reading were dedicated to editing and reading—made sense to me. I never truly followed these guidelines, mostly sticking to Note as my main source for writing, Edit for proofreading, and Read to mark an item as completed and receiving a stamp of approval to be published. With more use of the different Workflows, the more I grew accustomed to them. The subtle formatting changes were a pleasure to work with. They were the main reason I bought iA Writer Pro, along with the much approval I saw from Apple.

The distraction-free writing was also a very nice feature. At the time, I was ignorant to the fact that distraction-free writing was included in most Markdown editors—that was something I thought only iA Writer did. Now knowing that is a common practice, it still doesn't take away the appeal of iA Writer Pro's. It is still amongst my favorite.

The time I left iA Writer Pro was when I started getting into much more serious writing. iA Writer Pro just felt incomplete to me. I gave iA Writer Pro the light of day when somehow my 3,500-word review of 1Password somehow disappeared out of my iCloud Drive, and the apps that used that specified folder. Disregarding this mishap, there were still little details that bothered me.

To start, it wouldn't complete lists—I would have to keep inserting a "-" character or "1, 2, 3" to keep a numbered list going. If I wanted to throw a number in the middle, I would have to copy and paste everything over; it was frustrating. The sidebar is impossible to hide; literally, there is no hiding it. It is stuck there. If I didn't save a file fast enough, it would be titled "Untitled" with an extension of whatever the last workflow was. The fact that iA Writer Pro never remembered I wanted to check spelling while typing really annoyed me and broke my workflow constantly. These are all minuscule, I know. It may seem like I am complaining, but I articulate every little detail when I write. There is another big reason that I mostly left iA Writer Pro, and it has to do with the central ideology.

Ironically, the biggest reason I left iA Writer is the workflows. The default Markdown workflow is Write, which was my least favorite workflow—again, because of the font. Write felt more like a programming scheme. To keep my programming and writing partitioned, I used other workflows. If I wanted to write with a Markdown extension, I had to use the Write workflow.

Essentially, I felt tied down by the different Workflows. The tediousness of keeping up with the workflows was trivial yet exhaustive. At one point, I felt the need of having a workflow for the workflows. That is when I drew the line: there has to be something better.

So I switched to relying on Dropbox syncing, and sought after a new Mac Markdown editor—so I stumbled upon Write.

Write

Write was first introduced to me by the same person that introduced me to Markdown, Amit Jain. It was never explicitly endorsed; I just saw a screenshot that showcased it. When I started to leave iA Writer Pro, I was looking on the App Store in Apple's dedicated "Apps For Writers" section. I didn't want something heavy like Ulysses, but nothing as simple as iA Writer—or so I thought. It appeared to me that it had just the right feature set: a dark theme for writing at nighttime, visually appeasing, a centralized hub for all of my files, iCloud syncing (which was a nice bonus), and just the right amount of customizability. I bought it and made it my main writing client for a lengthy period of time.

The upfront functionality that I liked most was the centralized hub for all my Markdown files. I didn't have to go through Finder or Alfred to find the files that I needed; it was always a few clicks away. It had all the integrated storage services that I needed, particularly Dropbox, iCloud, and local files. No longer did I have to switch around in Finder to find what I was actually looking for. After incorporating all the services I needed, it was very satisfactory.

I grew to like the customizability of Write. The geeky, web development side of me loved playing around in the CSS to format things just as I liked it. It really disappointed me, however, when I realized that CSS changes were only applied to the editor itself, and not the surrounding content—meaning the library, file lists, and essentially everything else. I reverted everything back to default; the mismatched themes distracted me.

As the joy of the customizability was gone, I still enjoyed the outside services that it provided; particularly, my favorite was the post to WordPress. There are workarounds for just about any app to post to WordPress, but I didn't want a workaround—I wanted something native. Also, the included FTP and Tumblr integration was an added bonus. Months ago when I was writing to Tumblr, I would have particularly enjoyed it.

One day I came upon a revelation: I was enjoying the feature set more than the writing itself. I decided to go back to the iA Writer days: a simple Markdown editor that was delegated to writing. I came back to the ideology of simplicity. It was back to the drawing board.

Sure enough, the drawing board was "Apps For Writers" again. I searched everything, ultimately making the decision to try Byword.

Byword

Byword was simple enough from the start, and provided the main utilities that were needed. Off the bat, I enabled Dark Mode, changed the font to Source Sans Pro, and changed the width to as wide as possible. The pre-Yosemite appeal did pester me some, considering this was already months after Yosemite was unveiled at WWDC. In distraction-free writing, I couldn't really tell because the app icon and the gray-scale menu bar were not visible to me.

For the time being, it was excellent. Not only was Byword reliable and minimalistic, it also provided the option to publish to WordPress, a feature I still used Write for. It never gave me any trouble, never crashed, and was the text editor I loved.

There was nothing that explicitly made me leave Byword due to the app itself—it was everything that I was searching for. Except one day, I got an email from the people at Realmac Software (I was on a mailing list because of Clear, I believe) to try out a new product that was just launched: Typed.

When first using Typed, there was nothing truly different that stuck out at me. As I started writing more lengthy articles, that is when I fully transitioned from Byword to Typed.

Typed

I fell in love with Typed because of its elegance and design. It appeared to be a more aesthetically appealing version of Byword, but just without the publishing option. That is why I am currently using Typed, and will continue to do so until something of its nature releases. Typed is an integral part of my workflow.

The little details about Typed make me like it more and more to this day. The fact that the word count is on the top right corner for distraction-free writing is perfect; no way can I ever get distracted by it. The transparency in the white and gold writing formats makes me feel at home on Yosemite. The gold format in itself is something worth mentioning—I never really realized how much I didn't like white formatting until I used the gold theme. The dedicated writing font named "Typed Pro" is a nice change of pace. I never realized how much better Typed Pro is compared to Source Sans Pro until I ran Byword and Typed side by side.

As this was an initial release, I give Typed the light of day for little mistakes. It crashes occasionally; luckily, I save frequently. Sometimes it bobbles sections of text up and down. When formatting something like a header (# header), it changes from the original text to the larger font size in a second—I don't know if this is intentional, but it feels awkward to me. Regardless, it is still my favorite distraction-free writing tool, and I can't wait to see where the team at Realmac Software takes it.

To compensate for the lack of ability to publish to WordPress, I use Write to this day. I like that it can be used as a quick replacement for Finder, and if I need to do extensive editing that I did not account for, Alfred is always there to open it. I use a mixture of Write and Typed, something I never really thought of doing until I started to use Typed so much.

To conclude, Typed is simply my choice for Markdown editors. Its grace and finesse when handling writing is something I like. The little bugs don't bother me so much as other writing platforms do. I cannot recommend trying Typed enough.

The State of Markdown Editors

All said and done, every text editor on my list is still a great choice. Don't let my little nitpicking discourage you from using and trying your own workflows. While the Typed and Write combination is okay for me, it may bother someone switching back and forth. Maybe you like Byword and choose to stick with it; there is certainly not a problem with it. iA Writer and iA Writer Pro serve as a great writing platform for anyone. And this is not to say that one app may not update and grant a new feature set that will completely sweep me off my feet. It is still a level playing field. The choice is yours to make, not mine. But, after trying so many writing platforms and applications, something did occur to me.

Anyone you ask about writing on the iPad or iPhone will typically say the same thing: Editorial for productivity and workflows, iA Writer Pro for aesthetics. And that is the logical answer; Editorial is a powerhouse on the iOS platform, and iA Writer Pro is a downright beautiful application. Asking this same question about the Mac, you will get a mixture of answers—Write and Byword for functionality, iA Writer Pro for the beautiful interface, Typed and iA Writer for the distraction-free writing. Not to mention the many, many blogging applications for the Mac—Blogo, MarsEdit, and Desk to only name a few.

Nearing the end of 2014, there is still no dominant application—excluding Sublime Text. I'm sure many people share my belief that Sublime Text's functionality lies elsewhere outside of Markdown editing. Frankly, some people might get scared by all of the features that Sublime Text provides, especially package control. Still, there is no dominant text editor within the OS X community. It is still an even playing field.

For now, enjoy the little things. Enjoy the simplicity of the many distraction-free writing tools. They may have their quirks, some more than others. However, distraction-free writers today are at the pinnacle of their popularity and ability. Blogging is more popular than ever. Writing is still popular, which I cannot stress enough. And with Yosemite, design has never been so elegant.

To those who made this list, congratulations—it is well deserved. To those who didn't, there is a great chance I will try your application soon enough, and will probably update this list with your application in it. I might even come back in a year or two and revamp the list to include the many new and wonderful editors people bring forth in 2015.

And to those in development on the next distraction-free writer or Markdown editor, thank you for all your work. Thanks to developers like you, there is an ecosystem of apps that can thrive. The reason that I found such a beautiful workflow for myself is because developers like you provide people like me with so many options. Thank you.

My gratitude to everyone who has made this article possible, and especially the developers of iA Writer and iA Writer Pro, Write, Byword, and Typed. I hope to see you again soon in the things you do in 2015.