MarkPad

A lightweight, cross-platform Markdown editor with live preview.

Edit Markdown on the left, see it rendered on the right — with a recent-files
sidebar, a formatting toolbar, light/dark theming, auto-save, and OS file-association
handling, in a small native Tauri app for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Why • Features • Quick Start • Contributing • Architecture

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Why MarkPad?

Most Markdown editors ask for a tradeoff: a heavyweight Electron app that ships a whole browser to render a text file, a web app that wants your documents in the cloud, or a bare editor with no live preview at all.

MarkPad is the small, local-first alternative — a native desktop app that opens quickly, keeps every file on your machine, and shows your Markdown rendered side by side as you type. A recent-files sidebar, a one-click formatting toolbar, light/dark theming, optional auto-save, and real OS file-association handling make it usable day to day, without the bloat.

It is released under the MIT License and created by lezli01 at lezli01.is-a.dev. Contributions are welcome — see Contributing.

Features

Open a .md file and MarkPad treats editing and previewing as first-class, side-by-side work:

• Live split-pane preview. Edit Markdown on the left, see it rendered on the right, with each pane scrolling independently.
• In-document link navigation. Headings get anchor ids, so clicking an in-page link in the preview — like a table of contents [Section](#section) — smooth-scrolls to that heading within the preview pane.
• Formatting toolbar. One-click Markdown formatting from the editor header — bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code, headings, bullet/numbered lists, quotes, links, images, code blocks, tables, and horizontal rules — with shortcuts for the common ones (Ctrl/⌘+B, +I, +E, +K, and more). Buttons toggle the mark off when reapplied and light up to show the formatting at the cursor.
• Three view modes. Editor-only, preview-only, or side-by-side — switch at any time without losing the editor's content, selection, or undo history.
• Recent files sidebar. A left-hand panel lists up to 50 recently opened items — most-recent first, with modified files pinned to the top and marked. Click one to open it; modified and untitled documents keep their unsaved edits, cursor, and scroll position.
• Collapsible, resizable sidebar. Drag the divider to resize the recents panel, or hide it entirely for distraction-free writing with the toolbar toggle or Ctrl+\; the width and collapsed state persist.
• New empty file. Start a fresh Markdown document from the toolbar or Ctrl+N / ⌘N; it appears in the recents list as an untitled draft, and the first Save prompts for a path.
• Light and dark theme. Honors the operating system's appearance preference by default, with a manual toggle in the toolbar.
• Open files from disk. Native file picker biased toward .md and .markdown, with a fallback to all files.
• Open files from your file manager. Set MarkPad as the default for .md and a double-click opens MarkPad (or routes to the running instance).
• One window per user. MarkPad runs as a single instance; new file requests bring the existing window to the foreground.
• Save back to disk. Manual Save plus a visible modified indicator in the recents list so you always know whether your edits are on disk.
• Optional auto-save. Tick the box once and edits land on disk shortly after you stop typing, while a file is open.
• Unsaved-change guard. A file is never closed — only removed from the recents list. Removing an item that has unsaved edits prompts to Save, Discard, or Cancel so reflex clicks don't lose work.
• Resumes where you left off. Your recent-files list and the active document are restored on launch — including unsaved drafts and untitled documents, whose contents are saved locally so edits survive a restart. Files that have been moved or deleted are dropped when reopened.
• Persistent preferences. Theme, view mode, auto-save, and the sidebar's width and collapsed state are remembered between launches, stored locally.
• Responsive layout. Side-by-side on a normal window, stacks vertically at narrow widths.
• Safe preview. Rendered HTML is sanitized with DOMPurify before display.

Built With

• Tauri 2 — native desktop shell and filesystem access
• React 19 + TypeScript
• Vite — dev server and build
• CodeMirror 6 — editor
• markdown-it — Markdown rendering
• DOMPurify — preview sanitization
• Tailwind CSS — styling

For a high-level overview, see docs/architecture.md.

Quick Start

Prerequisites: Node.js LTS, npm, Rust + Cargo, and Tauri 2's platform prerequisites for your OS.

Install dependencies:

npm ci

Launch the desktop app:

npm run tauri dev

Or run just the frontend in a browser:

npm run dev

Development Checks

Frontend:

npm run lint
npm run build

Rust / Tauri (from src-tauri/):

cargo fmt --all --check
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo check --all-targets --all-features

Project Layout

src/             React + TypeScript UI (editor, preview, workspace, toolbar, recents panel)
src-tauri/       Rust crate that hosts the Tauri desktop runtime
specs/           Feature specifications (one folder per feature)
docs/            Architecture notes and supporting docs

Privacy

MarkPad is local-first. Files stay on your machine and the application does not send your content over the network. Preferences are stored in the local browser storage of the desktop runtime. Session state — your recent-files list, the active document, and any unsaved drafts — is stored locally in your platform's standard application-data directory; nothing is sent over the network.

Project Status

Early development, but already usable day-to-day. The split-pane workspace, the recent-files sidebar with draft persistence, file open/save, view modes, theming, auto-save, OS file-association handling, single-instance routing, and session restore are working today. Specs for shipped and in-progress features live under specs/; open issues and follow-ups are in the issue tracker.

Contributing

Contributions of every size are welcome — bug reports, docs, new features, and test cases. MarkPad is spec-driven and intentionally contributor-friendly: every meaningful feature begins with a short spec under specs/ and clear acceptance criteria before implementation. Start here:

• Read the Contributing guide for development setup, the issue-to-PR workflow, and the checks expected before a pull request.
• Be a good neighbor: this project follows a Code of Conduct.
• Have a question or an idea? Open a Discussion.
• Found a bug or want a feature? Open an issue.

Releases are automated with release-please, so pull requests use Conventional Commits titles. Details are in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Security

MarkPad is local-first and sanitizes all rendered HTML before display, so its attack surface is small — but security reports are taken seriously. Please do not open a public issue for suspected vulnerabilities; report them privately via GitHub's private vulnerability reporting for this repository. See SECURITY.md for details.

License

MarkPad is released under the MIT License. © 2026 lezli01.