Software Alternatives & Reviews

iA Writer VS MacDown

Compare iA Writer VS MacDown and see what are their differences

iA Writer logo iA Writer

Minimal Design, Maximum Focus

MacDown logo MacDown

MacDown is an open source Markdown editor for OS X, released under the MIT License.
  • iA Writer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-27
  • MacDown Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

iA Writer videos

SCOM0863 - iA Writer - Preview

More videos:

  • Review - What's The Apps: iA Writer

MacDown videos

BARRAS DE CORTE DA MACDOWN | APRESENTANDO MODs | FS19

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to iA Writer and MacDown)
Text Editors
66 66%
34% 34
Markdown Editor
68 68%
32% 32
Writing Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Markdown Viewer
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare iA Writer and MacDown

iA Writer Reviews

7 minimalist alternatives to CherryTree
Get focused. iA Writer offers a unique writing experience that lets you concentrate and clarify your message. Used by half a million people worldwide, its powerful interface is crafted to cut out noise, let you focus on what you want to say, and help you structure and trim your text. Available for Mac, iOS, Windows, and Android.
Source: papereditor.app
11 Best Scrivener Alternatives
The interface is easy to use, minimalistic, and helps you keep your writing goals on track. If you’re not technically sound and want a simple tool without any distracting features based on your own skills, you can go with iA Writer over Scrivener.

MacDown Reviews

We have no reviews of MacDown yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

MacDown might be a bit more popular than iA Writer. We know about 7 links to it since March 2021 and only 6 links to iA Writer. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

iA Writer mentions (6)

  • Bear alternatives on PC
    You might check out iA Writer. https://ia.net/ If I didn't have a Mac with access to Bear, that's probably what I'd be using. Source: 12 months ago
  • I didn't realize the community has grown so much..
    Obsidian ai (a forked version of this theme is my main, I haven't released it publicly because the ui is a clone of my favourite app iaWriter https://ia.net/, and I don't think that's ethically right to share). Source: over 1 year ago
  • Tools for structuring research notes and productivity/creativity
    Ia.net: looks good to build a personal wiki with hyperlinks (which is something I def want) but I fear this can get messy after a while and can loose overview easily. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • How to find and remove all finished tasks [x] at once in a single txt document?
    Thanks, it works! Could you share a link to learn more about patterns and how to use them. Unfortunately I couldn't find any info on ia.net. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • iA Writer's new site is up—where's the new update?
    I went to ia.net today to see if they had updated to a new site yet, and they had! Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

MacDown mentions (7)

  • Epub rendering with Pandoc
    I write a LOT of documentation in Markdown for $DAYJOB. I normally use Marked2 (not free, but I paid for my license 7-8 years ago) or MacDown (free) to preview them, and to export them to PDF. Both of these programs are specific to macOS, but a web search for "markdown editor" turns up a few dozen others, for other platforms. Most of these will have an "export to PDF" function built into them. Source: 5 months ago
  • Good Free Application For Reading `.md` Files On Mac Pro
    MacDown is free, open source and super simple. Has been my go-to Markdown editor for years. Highly recommend. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: Is there any beautiful Markdown editor?
    Macdown: https://macdown.uranusjr.com/ And here's a huge list: https://github.com/mundimark/awesome-markdown-editors. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • High probability of conversion issues from PDF to Epub
    So I convert the PDF to Markdown format. Then I use my Markdown editor of choice, Macdown, to clean up the text and then convert the resulting document into the format that I want. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Markdown editor's with a toolbar?
    If you're talking about buttons to help you style your text so you don't have to remember the syntax, then MacDown will have you covered. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing iA Writer and MacDown, you can also consider the following products

Scrivener - Scrivener is a content-generation tool for composing and structuring documents.

Typora - A minimal Markdown reading & writing app.

Markdown by DaringFireball - Text-to-HTML conversion tool/syntax for web writers, by John Gruber

FocusWriter - FocusWriter is a fullscreen, distraction-free word processor designed to immerse you as much as...

StackEdit - Full-featured, open-source Markdown editor based on PageDown, the Markdown library used by Stack Overflow and the other Stack Exchange sites.

Joplin - Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor.