Markdown Live

A desktop markdown editor with Vim keybindings, real-time preview, and synchronized scrolling.

Oct 4, 2025 • 2 min read

Motivation

As someone who write markdown documentation frequently, I always wanted to be able to see the output of the Markdown without pushing it to Github first. I want to be able to edit the Markdown file and see the live preview at the same time.

There are Markdown editors out there, both for desktop and web-based version. But the thing is, I can’t live without Vim. After years of using Vim and VS Code with the Vim keybinding, using the arrows on the keyboard feel weird to me.

So I decided to build one myself.

I don’t want to build another text editor. I just want a simple desktop app to preview my Markdown files and edit them as needed, so it lacks some features like opening and saving files. This is by design.

Key Features

The editor includes several features designed for efficient markdown writing:

Technical Implementation

The application uses CodeMirror 6 for the editor with the @replit/codemirror-vim extension to provide authentic Vim keybindings. The preview pane uses marked.js for fast markdown parsing and rendering.

Tauri provides the desktop framework, offering a lightweight Rust backend with a web-based frontend. This architecture delivers native performance while maintaining the flexibility of web technologies.

The source code is available on Github.