Software Alternatives & Reviews

MacDown VS Scrivener

Compare MacDown VS Scrivener and see what are their differences

MacDown logo MacDown

MacDown is an open source Markdown editor for OS X, released under the MIT License.

Scrivener logo Scrivener

Scrivener is a content-generation tool for composing and structuring documents.
  • MacDown Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Scrivener Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-16

FROM LITERATURE & LATTE WEBSITE: Scrivener is the go-to app for writers of all kinds, used every day by best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more. Tailor-made for long writing projects, Scrivener banishes page fright by allowing you to compose your text in any order, in sections as large or small as you like. Got a great idea but don't know where it fits? Write when inspiration strikes and find its place later. Grow your manuscript organically, idea by idea. In Scrivener, everything you write is integrated into an easy-to-use project outline. So working with an overview of your manuscript is only ever a click away, and turning Chapter Four into Chapter One is as simple as drag and drop. Need to refer to research? In Scrivener, your background material is always at hand, and you can open it right next to your work. Write a description based on a photograph. Transcribe an interview. Take notes about a PDF file or web page. Or check for consistency by referencing an earlier chapter alongside the one in progress. Once you're ready to share your work with the world, compile everything into a single document for printing, self-publishing, or exporting to popular formats such as Word, PDF, Final Draft or plain text. You can even share using different formatting, so that you can write in your favorite font and still satisfy those submission guidelines.

MacDown videos

BARRAS DE CORTE DA MACDOWN | APRESENTANDO MODs | FS19

Scrivener videos

Scrivener vs Word: Review of What Scrivener Can Do For You

More videos:

  • Review - Ultimate Scrivener 3 Review
  • Review - Why I Think Scrivener is For Everyone (and why I like it so much)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to MacDown and Scrivener)
Text Editors
29 29%
71% 71
Writing Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Markdown Editor
25 25%
75% 75
Markdown Viewer
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

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

MacDown Reviews

We have no reviews of MacDown yet.
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Scrivener Reviews

11 Best Scrivener Alternatives
The app’s interface looks similar to Scrivener, but you get a different experience based on your level and interests. Scrivener’s learning curve is designed for intermediate or higher levels of writers, but Ulysses makes it easier by offering tutorials along with its features.
7 Best Scrivener Alternatives
This writing tool is a Scrivener alternative that is similar to a Scrivener. The appearance of the user interface is identical to Scrivener but a little bit more modern.
5 Free Scrivener Alternatives to Manage Writing Projects
Ask most experts what the best novel writing software is, and they’ll usually tell you Scrivener. It’s also a popular tool for organizing research for most writing projects, although it’s not free. While they’re not always as robust, free Scrivener alternatives help you accomplish similar results without any fees. For students, full-time writers, and even freelancers, these...
9 Scrivener Alternative Tools: Overview, Pros, And Cons
No direct import from Scrivener: Ulysses doesn’t handle Scrivener files, at least not directly. You have to export your content as MultiMarkdown files in Scrivener first, click Save, and drag the .mmd file into Ulysses’ library.
17 Top Evernote Alternatives for Note-Taking for 2019
If your notes have anything to do with any type of writing: outlines, notes on drafts, brain dumps on story ideas, blog posts, scripts, essays, anything like that—you should migrate all of it to Scrivener.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, MacDown seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 7 times since March 2021. 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.

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

Scrivener mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Scrivener yet. Tracking of Scrivener recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

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

Typora - A minimal Markdown reading & writing app.

Manuskript - Open-source tool for writers.

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

iA Writer - Minimal Design, Maximum Focus

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

yWriter - Free writing software designed by the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series. yWriter6 helps you write a book by organising chapters, scenes, characters and locations in an easy-to-use interface.