Introducing Edmund

Jun 26, 2026 · A native, lightweight Markdown editor with live preview made for macOS

Edmund logo, summary, and demo file window

the story

I’ve been using Obsidian since before Steph Ango became CEO. But I was never a power user with a super customized screen and more than two dozen extensions. I stuck to the Minimal theme, hid all the controls with Hider, added Typewriter Scroll, and (other than the dozen extensions disabled) that’s it. It kept my vault looking sleek and launching fast. And I almost never used Wikilinks and graph view 🤷‍♀️

Because all I wanted was a native-feeling Markdown editor with live preview, and that for free. (Sorry, Typora.)

the why

Question

But why create another app when there’s already so many great Markdown editors out there? (And Obsidian, too?)

I guess the reason is, none of them is perfect enough…First of all, Obsidian is dependent on vaults, but I would rather not be bound to a particular vault (at least for some files) and be free to edit my Markdown files wherever. Second, I am spoiled by CotEditor which, in my opinion, is the perfect text editor. And I wanted to build a Markdown editor that is also, in my opinion, perfect.

Ultimately, it comes down to taste… – Steve Jobs

In particular, a perfect Markdown editor should (at least)

Typora comes really close. I even tagged my repo with “typora” since I basically modelled Edmund after it. I’ve used the trial, and multiple times, too 🫣. However, it does not feel like a native macOS application to me personally. From the blocky icons on the toolbar to the lengthy app menus to the Snow-Leopard-looking settings. To be honest, I am very picky when it comes to UI…The built in Newsprint theme looks really good, not to mention the transitions and the app’s stability in general. If only Typora could just fix those tiny details…

But even then, it still won’t be native. (I’m too deep down the Apple rabbit hole…)

the product

Edmund logo, summary, and demo file window (Yes I’m reusing the image 😬)

Introducing Edmund, a native, lightweight Markdown editor with live preview made for macOS. Some of its best features include

The GitHub repo Readme already describes the app’s features in abundant detail. Here’s a video demo so you can see it, too.

Edmund demo video

As of now, the app is still in beta with a lot of active development. But I do have a roadmap if you’re interested in where the app will be heading.

In the grand scheme of things (in the tiny world of software, that is), I hope to do my best to ensure Edmund sticks close to CotEditor’s philosophy (minus the text-editor-specific part), since that’s mostly why I decided to make the app. Along the way I also found MarkEdit, whose philosophy I have also somewhat picked up on. On top of that, I also want Edmund to feel just a tiny bit humanitarian, classy, or, warm1, which is why I call it Edmund. We’ll see how that happens, if ever. Time and the open-source community will let me know.

I hope that I’m not the only Edmund user in the world…And I won’t know because we don’t have diagnostics :D

So PLEASE do let me know if you have any feedback, complaints, request, or whatsoever! Shoot me an email at [email protected] anytime :)

Thanks for listening. Until next time.

Tiny Edmund (edmd) icon

Footnotes

  1. This somehow reminded me of how my Calculus II professor once said, “I like ‘Squeeze Theorem’ better than ‘Sandwich Theorem.’ ‘Sandwich’ reminds you of food, but ‘squeeze’ is like a hug.” ↩

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