MacDown is an open source Markdown editor for OS X, released under the MIT License. The author stole the idea from Chen Luo’s Mou so that people can make crappy clones.

Visit the project site for more information, or download MacDown.app.zip directly from the latest releases page.

Download, unzip, and drag the app to Applications folder. MacDown is also available through Homebrew Cask:

brew install --cask macdown

MacDown can be used as a lightweight business-document workbench when a single report, proposal, policy, or book needs reusable Markdown source files and polished exports.

The most valuable improvements for business use are:

• Master documents with local includes, so teams can compose reports from chapter, appendix, and reusable boilerplate files.
• Front matter metadata for title, subtitle, author, logo, header, footer, watermark, brand color, cover-page, page-numbering, and layout defaults.
• A generated table of contents for long documents.
• Export presets for modern, classic, and compact business layouts.
• Cover pages for proposals, board packs, books, and client deliverables.
• DOCX export for editable Microsoft Word handoff.
• PPTX export for turning Markdown briefs into editable presentation drafts.
• PDF export that uses the same branding controls as HTML export.
• HTML export that can be shared as a self-contained review artifact.
• Page numbering controls for printed and formal PDF/DOCX documents.
• Header and footer controls for confidentiality labels, authorship, dates, and document status.
• Logo and brand-color controls for client-facing or internal-branded output.
• Watermarking for draft, confidential, and internal-review deliverables.
• Include warnings and preview refreshes for changed include source files.
• Consistent preview/export titles from document metadata.
• Relative asset paths, so logos and includes can live next to the master file.
• Save/export filename suggestions derived from front matter titles.
• Reusable chapter files for books, manuals, policies, and knowledge bases.
• A compact export style for dense operational reports.
• Native document tab grouping for large books, policies, and report packs.

Create a master Markdown file and include other Markdown files with any of these directives:

!include chapters/introduction.md
{{include chapters/market-analysis.md}}
<!-- include: appendices/financials.md -->

Include paths may be absolute, use ~, or be relative to the file that contains the directive. Included files may include more files. MacDown skips circular includes and inserts a warning in the generated Markdown when an include cannot be read. When preview rendering is active, MacDown watches included files and re-renders the master document when an included source changes.

For a book, keep each chapter in its own file and assemble them from a master:

---
title: Operating Manual
subtitle: Field Edition
author: Operations
coverPage: true
pageNumbers: true
toc: true
layout: modern
---

# Operating Manual

!include chapters/01-introduction.md
!include chapters/02-setup.md
!include chapters/03-procedures.md
!include appendices/a-checklists.md

For a quick manual concatenation outside MacDown, use the shell:

cat chapters/*.md > master.md

For repeatable business documents, prefer a MacDown master file with includes. That keeps chapters independently editable and avoids rebuilding master.md every time a source chapter changes.

Enable HTML table-of-contents rendering in Markdown preferences, then add this where the TOC should appear:

[TOC]

In a master document, you can also set toc: true or tableOfContents: true in front matter. MacDown inserts [TOC] at the start of the compiled document when one is not already present.

Use YAML front matter at the top of the master document to prefill export branding:

---
title: Quarterly Business Review
subtitle: Q4 FY26
author: Strategy and Operations
header: Confidential
footer: Board package
logo: assets/company-logo.png
watermark: Draft
brandColor: "#0F766E"
coverPage: true
pageNumbers: true
layout: modern
toc: true
---

Relative logo paths are resolved from the master document's folder. You can still override these values in the export panel before writing HTML, PDF, DOCX, or PPTX.

On macOS versions with native window tabs, use the Window menu to reduce clutter:

• Merge All Documents into Tabs puts every open Markdown document into one tab group.
• Group Document Tabs by Folder creates separate tab groups for documents that live in the same folder, which is useful for books, policies, and report packs made from many chapter files.

MacDown is released under the terms of MIT License. You may find the content of the license here, or inside the LICENSE directory.

You may find full text of licenses about third-party components in the LICENSE directory, or the About MacDown panel in the application.

The following editor themes and CSS files are extracted from Mou, courtesy of Chen Luo:

• Mou Fresh Air
• Mou Fresh Air+
• Mou Night
• Mou Night+
• Mou Paper
• Mou Paper+
• Tomorrow
• Tomorrow Blue
• Tomorrow+
• Writer
• Writer+
• Clearness
• Clearness Dark
• GitHub
• GitHub2

If you wish to build MacDown yourself, you will need the following components/tools:

• OS X SDK (10.14 or later)
• Git
• CocoaPods

Note: Old versions of CocoaPods are not supported. Please use the latest CocoaPods available on your system.

Note: The Command Line Tools (CLT) should be unnecessary. If you failed to compile without it, please install CLT with

xcode-select --install

and report back.

An appropriate SDK should be bundled with Xcode 5 or later versions.

After cloning the repository, run the following commands inside the repository root (directory containing this README.md file):

git submodule update --init
pod install
make -C Dependency/peg-markdown-highlight

and open MacDown.xcworkspace in Xcode. The first command initialises the dependency submodule(s) used in MacDown; the second one installs dependencies managed by CocoaPods.

Refer to the official guides of Git and CocoaPods if you need more instructions. If you run into build issues later on, try running the following commands to update dependencies:

git submodule update
pod install

Please help translation on Transifex.

Join our Gitter channel if you have any problems with MacDown. Any suggestions are welcomed, too!

You can also file an issue directly on GitHub if you prefer so. But please, search first to make sure no-one has reported the same issue already before opening one yourself. MacDown does not update in your computer immediately when we make changes, so something you experienced might be known, or even fixed in the development version.

MacDown depends a lot on other open source projects, such as Hoedown for Markdown-to-HTML rendering, Prism for syntax highlighting (in code blocks), and PEG Markdown Highlight for editor highlighting. If you find problems when using those particular features, you can also consider reporting them directly to upstream projects as well as to MacDown’s issue tracker. I will do what I can if you report it here, but sometimes it can be more beneficial to interact with them directly.

If you find MacDown suitable for your needs, please consider giving me a tip through PayPal. Or, if you prefer to buy me a drink personally instead, just send me a tweet when you visit Taipei, Taiwan, where I live. I look forward to meeting you!