Markover

A desktop Markdown editor with Word-like collaboration features — WYSIWYG editing, comments, track changes, and clean round-trip serialization.

Built with Electron, React, and TipTap (ProseMirror).

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Features

Editing

• WYSIWYG Markdown — Full CommonMark editing with live rendering
• Raw mode — Toggle to syntax-highlighted source editing (CodeMirror) with Ctrl+Shift+R
• Rich formatting — Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, inline code, headings H1–H6, blockquotes, horizontal rules
• Lists — Bullet, ordered, and task (checkbox) lists with indent/outdent
• Tables — Insert and edit tables; resize columns by dragging
• Code blocks — Syntax-highlighted fenced code blocks (Shiki/Lowlight) with language selector
• Math — Inline $…$ and block $$…$$ KaTeX rendering; double-click to edit
• Diagrams — Mermaid fenced code blocks rendered as diagrams; double-click to edit
• Footnotes — Standard [^1] footnote syntax
• YAML front matter — Displayed as a styled card at the top of the document
• Images — Insert by URL, drag-and-drop, or paste; stored as relative paths from the document; double-click to edit URL, alt text, and width
• File attachments — Drag any non-image file onto the editor to insert a clickable file-type icon linked to the file; icon colour reflects file type (PDF, Word, Excel, etc.)

Collaboration

• Comments — Select text and add a comment thread; threads are shown in the sidebar and highlighted in the document; replies, resolve, and delete supported
• Track Changes — Enable tracking to mark insertions (green) and deletions (red strikethrough); accept or reject changes individually or all at once
• Author identity — Set your display name and colour via the avatar button in the toolbar

File Handling

• Open / Save / Save As — Standard file operations for .md files
• Recent files — Deduplicated, most-recently-used ordering
• Publish — Export a clean .md file with all metadata stripped and all tracked changes accepted (Ctrl+Shift+P)
• Unsaved changes guard — Prompted to save (or discard) before closing, opening another file, or creating a new document
• Linked files — Clicking a .md link opens it in a new Markover instance; other links open in the system default app

Other

• Spell check — Electron Hunspell integration with context-menu suggestions and "Add to dictionary"; per-document ignore list persisted as `` in the file
• Light / Dark / System theme — Toggleable from the toolbar
• Print and PDF export — Via Electron's printToPDF
• Keyboard shortcuts — Full shortcut set; F1 opens the in-app user guide

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File Format

Markover saves standard .md files that open in any Markdown editor. Collaboration metadata is stored unobtrusively:

Data	Storage
Comment threads	<!-- markover:comment … --> blocks appended at end of file
Comment highlights	<span data-markov="hl" …> inline HTML
Track-change insertions	<span data-markov="ins" …> inline HTML
Track-change deletions	<span data-markov="del" …> inline HTML
Spell-check ignores	<!-- cspell:ignore XXXX --> at top of file

All metadata is invisible or benign in other Markdown renderers. Use Publish to produce a completely clean file.

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18 or later
• npm 9 or later

Install

git clone https://github.com/wetware0/markover.git
cd markover
npm install

Run in development

npm start

Build a distributable

npm run make

Output is placed in out/make/.

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Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+N	New document
Ctrl+O	Open file
Ctrl+S	Save
Ctrl+Shift+S	Save As
Ctrl+Shift+P	Publish (export clean markdown)
Ctrl+P	Print
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y	Undo / Redo
Ctrl+F	Find
Ctrl+H	Find and replace
Ctrl++ / Ctrl+-	Zoom in / Zoom out
Ctrl+0	Reset zoom
Ctrl+B	Bold
Ctrl+I	Italic
Ctrl+U	Underline
Ctrl+Shift+X	Strikethrough
Ctrl+E	Inline code
Ctrl+Shift+E	Code block
Ctrl+Shift+B	Blockquote
Ctrl+Shift+R	Toggle raw / WYSIWYG mode
Ctrl+Shift+M	Add comment (requires selection)
Ctrl+Shift+T	Toggle track changes
F1	User guide

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Known Limitations

• Track changes and structural edits — Deleting across paragraph boundaries or through formatted node boundaries may not be tracked cleanly; the plugin skips structural changes to avoid corruption.
• Blockquote line breaks — Two consecutive > lines without a blank line are rendered with a hard line break between them (rather than merged into one paragraph). This is intentional but deviates from strict CommonMark behaviour.
• Spell check in raw mode — The CodeMirror raw editor uses the browser's built-in spell checker (red underlines) rather than Electron's Hunspell integration; context-menu suggestions are not available in raw mode.

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Shell	Electron 34 + Electron Forge
UI	React 19, Tailwind CSS 4
Editor	TipTap 3 (ProseMirror)
Raw editor	CodeMirror 6
Markdown parser	markdown-it
Math	KaTeX
Diagrams	Mermaid
Syntax highlighting	Shiki / Lowlight
State	Zustand
Icons	Lucide React
E2E tests	Playwright

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License

MIT © Peter Williams