MDEdit opens a folder on your Mac and shows it as a binder of notes. Every note stays a plain text file, so nothing is locked in and nothing needs importing.
Download for MacNeeds macOS 14 or later. No account. All releases
Write an HTML page with a few template tags and MDEdit fills it in from the folder: an index of your notes, a task list, a summary of every note under its Summary heading. Preview builds the page. It only reads, and nothing is written back.
Turn on the local agent server and a tool such as Claude Code can propose edits to the note you have open. Each one arrives in the Review tab as a diff with the agent's reason. Nothing changes until you accept it.
Distraction free hides everything but the note. Typewriter mode keeps the line you are typing in the middle of the window, so you never write at the bottom edge of the screen.
Press ⇧⌘O and type a few letters of a name or path, in order but not next to each other. sou finds Sourdough Bread.md. Return opens it.
Point MDEdit at any folder. The subfolders and notes show up in a sidebar and open with a click. Rename, move, trash, or drag files in from Finder. When you quit, the folder is exactly as you left it.
In Write mode the Markdown stays on screen, lightly styled as you type. Switch to View and the same note is set in a serif or sans face made for reading, with proper quotes and dashes.
Type [[ and pick a note. The side panel lists the headings of the note you're in and every note that links back to it. Front matter turns into a small table when you read.
Find and replace in one note or in all of them. You see a diff before anything changes, and a single undo puts every file back if none of them has been touched since.
They open in the same editor, as code. Preview shows an HTML page, indented JSON, or YAML as a table. An HTML file with template tags can build an index of your notes, reading them and never changing them.
MDEdit runs in the macOS sandbox and only touches the folder you open. It saves as you type and won't overwrite a file that changed behind its back. No account, no sync service, no tracking, and no network connections of its own.
Turn on the local agent server in Settings and a tool such as Claude Code can read the note you have open and propose changes over MCP. They show up in a Review tab as diffs, and nothing changes until you accept. It's off until you switch it on.
MDEdit is a Markdown editor for the Mac. It opens a folder as a project and edits the .md and .txt files in it directly, with wiki links, backlinks, find and replace across the folder, and a typeset reading view.
Where they already are. MDEdit works on the files in the folder you open. It doesn't keep a copy, a database or a library of its own.
No to both. It makes no network connections of its own. Pictures and stylesheets from the web load in a note only if you switch that on in Settings.
Yes. MDEdit is free and released under the MIT licence. The source, the issue tracker and every release are on GitHub.
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. There is no Windows, iPhone or iPad version.
Yes. [[Note]], [[Note|alias]], [[Note#Heading]] and [[folder/Note]] all work, with a list of notes as you type. The side panel shows the notes that link back to the one you have open.
If its notes are Markdown or text files, yes. MDEdit reads and saves them where they are, so the folder still works in whatever else you use on it.
Only if you let one. The local agent server is off until you turn it on in Settings. An agent can then read the note you have open and suggest changes, which appear in a Review tab as a diff. Nothing changes until you accept it.
Download the disk image, open it and drag MDEdit into Applications. It is signed and notarised by Apple, so it opens like any other app.
Needs macOS 14 or later. All releases