Software Alternatives & Reviews

MacDown VS Zettlr

Compare MacDown VS Zettlr and see what are their differences

MacDown logo MacDown

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

Zettlr logo Zettlr

Write Markdown documents with a comprehensive GUI and many workflow/time management tools.
  • MacDown Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Zettlr Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-30

MacDown videos

BARRAS DE CORTE DA MACDOWN | APRESENTANDO MODs | FS19

Zettlr videos

Meet Zettlr, your all-in-one companion for writing #Markdown

More videos:

  • Review - Zettlr Introduction: Getting Started
  • Review - Citing with Zettlr

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to MacDown and Zettlr)
Text Editors
54 54%
46% 46
Note Taking
13 13%
87% 87
Markdown Editor
51 51%
49% 49
Markdown Viewer
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using MacDown and Zettlr. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

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

MacDown Reviews

We have no reviews of MacDown yet.
Be the first one to post

Zettlr Reviews

Best Next-Level Note Apps for 2021
Zettlr is simply an open-source Markdown editor. The system authorizes various citation formats, includes theme customization and writing statistics, as well as supporting the Zettelkasten method. File and tag management permits user-friendly note organization. Noteworthy of Mem is that the app is available in 14 languages and notes can be exported in 40 different formats.
Source: zenkit.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Zettlr might be a bit more popular than MacDown. We know about 10 links to it since March 2021 and only 7 links to MacDown. 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

Zettlr mentions (10)

  • Zettlr in the fediverse and on matrix?
    Oh! That's nice. :D Is this mentioned on zettlr.com? Seems as if I've missed it... Source: about 1 year ago
  • Suggestion for open source note taking app
    I'd strongly recommend trying out Zettlr (https://zettlr.com), which in many ways is close to Obsidian (except Zettlr is open source). A new Zettlr release is close to arriving and implements lots of improvements. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Scrivener alternatives for academic writing and research?
    You might give Zettlr a spin. It's another Markdown-based tool like Obsidian, but it is really focussed on Zettelkasten, and of interest to you, with a stronger focus on long-form academic writing. It supports citations, footnotes and uses Pandoc for document production—so there are lots of ways to get your work out. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Any open source markdown editor having live preview like Typora?
    Is https://zettlr.com an option for you? Source: about 2 years ago
  • Typora alternative? (or any desktop Markdown editor with export to PDF?)
    Zettlr is open source and has export-to-PDF. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

Typora - A minimal Markdown reading & writing app.

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.

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

Obsidian.md - A second brain, for you, forever. Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

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

Logseq - Logseq is a local-first, non-linear, outliner notebook for organizing and sharing your personal knowledge base.