A MacDown alternative
that is still maintained
Is there a maintained MacDown alternative?
MacDown has not seen active development in years. TypeFire is actively maintained, native to macOS, and edits markdown live rather than in a split preview.
It adds Quick Look rendering in Finder, opens entire folders including an Obsidian vault, and the notes editor is free in full.
Why people move from MacDown
The specific reasons people give for switching.
Development has largely stopped
MacDown still opens and still works, but releases have been rare for years. An app that renders untrusted content and registers as a file handler is one you want maintained against a moving macOS.
No Quick Look preview
MacDown renders inside its own window. Pressing space on a .md file in Finder still shows raw source. TypeFire installs a Quick Look extension so every Markdown file previews rendered.
No text expansion
The repeated parts of writing Markdown, link formats, front matter, callouts, code fences, are exactly what a text expander is for, and TypeFire has one built in and free.
No search across your files
MacDown is one document at a time. TypeFire treats Markdown as a library with collections, tags, favorites and a Spotlight-style search across all of it.
No AI anywhere
Highlight a paragraph and rewrite, translate or shorten it in place, using Apple Intelligence or a local model so it can stay on your Mac.
TypeFire compared with MacDown
Prices and capabilities as of September 2026.
| TypeFire | MacDown | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free for editing and Quick Look | Free, open source |
| Actively developed | Yes | Rarely |
| Markdown editor | Yes, renders live as you type | Yes, split pane |
| Quick Look preview in Finder | Yes | No |
| Can be default .md app | Yes | Yes |
| GitHub Flavored Markdown | Yes, tables and task lists | Yes |
| Text expander | Yes, unlimited, free | No |
| Clipboard manager | Yes, free for 10 clips | No |
| AI on selected text | Yes, Pro | No |
| Open source | No | Yes |
MacDown details from its public repository, August 2026. Both apps keep your Markdown as plain files on disk.
What MacDown does better
Three of them, named plainly, with what TypeFire does instead directly below.
Free and open source
No cost, no account, and you can read exactly what it does. If that combination is what you want from a Markdown editor, MacDown still delivers it and TypeFire does not.
Classic split-pane editing
Source on the left, rendered on the right, synchronized scrolling. Some people strongly prefer that to a toggle, and MacDown does it simply and well.
It is just an editor
No text expander, no clipboard manager, no AI. If you want a Markdown editor and nothing else in your menu bar, that focus is a legitimate preference.
What TypeFire adds
Not available in MacDown at any price.
A notes vault, not just an editor
4.0 opens a whole folder of markdown, including an Obsidian vault, with wikilinks, backlinks, quick capture and a global hotkey that reaches any note from inside another app.
Live rendering that does not rewrite the file
Markdown renders as you type while the buffer stays raw, so callouts, embeds, footnotes and your own emphasis characters survive a save untouched.
Active development
Regular releases, tested against current macOS, with in-app updates rather than a download you have to remember to check for.
Quick Look for every .md file
Press space in Finder and read the file rendered with syntax-highlighted code blocks, without opening any app.
A text expander, free
Abbreviations that expand into link formats, front matter, tables and code fences, in every app on your Mac rather than only in the editor.
Search across everything
Collections, tags, favorites and a Spotlight-style launcher over your whole Markdown library.
AI on your selection
Rewrite, translate or shorten highlighted text in place, on-device if you choose Apple Intelligence or a local model.
Turn anything you copy into something you type
Right-click a clip, choose Save as snippet, give it an abbreviation. The thing you copied once becomes something you type three characters to get, forever. The same conversions run across all three surfaces: a clip becomes a note, and a note you keep rewriting becomes a snippet. Snippets, clips and notes live in one app, which is what makes each of those a single click rather than an export and an import.
- 01
Copy something
It lands in Clips alongside everything else you copied today.
- 02
Save as snippet
It leaves your rolling history and enters your permanent library.
- 03
Give it a trigger
Type
invfrom then on and never look it up again.
A clipboard manager you can tell what to ignore
A clipboard manager sees everything you copy. Until 4.0 the only control over that was a password-manager exclusion you could not see. There are three now, none of them gated, and the limits of the strongest one are stated rather than buried.
Turn image capture off
One switch. Text keeps being captured and pictures stop. Images you have already saved are kept rather than deleted, which is not what most people expect a privacy toggle to do, so it is worth saying.
Name apps to skip
Add any application and TypeFire ignores what you copy in it. Choose from the apps it has already seen, with clip counts, or browse to any app on your Mac. Each app gets one of three settings: allow it, block images only, or block everything you copy there. The middle one is what most people want for a work tool, keeping the text and losing the screenshots.
The password managers, now visible
TypeFire has always ignored password managers. That list is in Settings now, twenty-three apps including 1Password, Bitwarden, KeePassXC, Dashlane and Apple Passwords, blocked by bundle ID in code rather than by a setting you have to find. It shows which of them you have installed, and any one can be overridden.
Encrypted on your Mac
Clips are stored in an encrypted database on your Mac. The key is generated on your machine and kept in the macOS Keychain. Images sit beside it, readable only by your own account.
Secrets expire in minutes
Card numbers and high-entropy strings are detected and deleted after five minutes by default, adjustable in Settings. Everything else follows the retention you choose.
An on-device AI option
Apple Intelligence and local models through Ollama or LM Studio run entirely on your machine. If you pick Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini instead, text goes to that provider directly; TypeFire operates no server in that path.
Where blocking by app stops being a guarantee
macOS does not tell an application which other application wrote to the clipboard. TypeFire matches on the app that was in front at the time, plus any app that identifies itself using the standard convention. That covers the overwhelming majority of real cases and it is not absolute. The protection that does not depend on a guess is the concealed-content marker: password managers mark what they copy, and TypeFire never stores it whatever else is set.
The app list also covers what you copy, not screenshots you save as a file. A PNG on your desktop records nothing about what was on screen, so TypeFire matches those to an app where it can and skips them when it does. It is right in the ordinary case and it is not a promise: to keep saved screenshots out entirely, turn off Save screenshots to Clips.
Eighteen dollars. Once.
TypeFire Pro is a single payment that unlocks unlimited clips, Selection Prompts, Prompt Chains, notes sync, note version history and saving from AI apps through MCP. There is no subscription and no per-seat pricing.
Free tier, then one payment
No free tier at all
One time
No free tier
One time
Lifetime, or $3.99/mo
Five snippets free, then a subscription
MacDown is free and open source. TypeFire is free for everything MacDown does, with Pro at $18 once for features unrelated to Markdown.
The graph is free, and it needs nothing
Press ` and TypeFire draws every note, snippet and clip on one canvas, using the links, tags and folders already in your files. Nothing to download and nothing to switch on. A connection you made is drawn solid, one TypeFire worked out is drawn dashed.
Turn on Weave and search starts matching what you meant rather than the exact words you typed. It runs on your Mac, with no account and nothing uploaded.
Moving from MacDown
Still not answered?
It still runs, but releases have been infrequent for a long time.
That matters more for a Markdown app than most, because it renders content and can register as the system handler for .md files, so it sits in a position where macOS changes can break it. Check its repository for the most recent release date before relying on it.
Markdown editing, Quick Look preview and the text expander are all free with no cap and no trial.
Pro is $18 once and covers three things that have nothing to do with Markdown: unlimited clipboard clips, Selection Prompts and Prompt Chains. So for MacDown's use case specifically, TypeFire costs nothing.
Yes. Command O opens any .md file, and you can set TypeFire as the default handler so double-clicking one opens it.
It registers against the standard Markdown file type, so files from MacDown, Obsidian, Typora or a git repo all open normally.
Not split-pane. Markdown formats in place as you type, so there is one window rather than two panes: headings, bold, tables and syntax-highlighted code blocks render where you are writing, and search runs across the rendered text rather than the raw source.
If synchronized side-by-side panes are what you like about MacDown, that is a genuine difference.
Other comparisons
11 extensions compared
Every Mac markdown note app compared8 apps, where the notes live
Apple Notes alternativeNotes that are files
Markdown on MacEditor, viewer and Quick Look
Markdown Quick LookPress space, read it
Typora alternativeFree, and previews in Finder
Marked 2 alternativePreview plus editing
Obsidian alternativeFor the file layer
PricingWhat Pro actually covers
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