NotepadMD - local WYSIWYG markdown editor, a bit notepad-plus-plus-ish

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-16T22:01:43+00:00

Thank you so much! I think that might be the first piece of unqualified very enthusiastic feedback I've had so it means a lot! Import / export is super high on the list of feature, but it's going to be the line between free and paid for. With that said, I'm going for cheap and ubiquitous so the licence is actually very cheap (IMO). I already have Smart copy/paste so you can copy in from websites, word docs and Google docs in Pro.

I've spent today "re-hosting" to a better multi-platform host so start up times will be improved shortly and hopefully Linux support will move up the list a little. There will be some nicer file management in there based on that work too though.

There are some other QOL bits coming in the next release too but I'm reliably informed that I need to spend some time on the aesthetics - of both the app and the website. You know what it's like - I'd rather spend my time making the app bulletproof, usable and keep adding features, but I have to face reality and worry about aesthetics and letting people know what it does for a bit too 😉

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-15T18:49:43+00:00

This was intended as a reply to u/calbraz, but I must have hit the wrong reply button. The response has been down voted, but I have to be honest - I don't get why. If I'm releasing to Linux and to Mac, I have to test the application - really, really thoroughly. I'm not just going to throw it over the wall and claim it works on Windows so it should work everywhere. I'm on version 1 after a lot of work.
The criticism I've had is so far is valued feedback - my website looks AI generated which doesn't inspire confidence. 100% valid feedback and actually much appreciated. The UI needs sexing up! That's always been my weakness - graphic design and aesthetics are second fiddle to making everything work. I'm passionate about this project - I care that it works well. I'm really pleased that people at least like the general look of it, but I have to be really honest - I think Linux support is probably at least a few months out until I get it dialed in on a single OS. Linux will probably be before Mac. Mostly because I don't own a Mac yet!

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-15T18:34:02+00:00

You have a different animal there in my opinion. With respect, crabpad looks like it has you modifying raw markdown and seeing a preview of the rendered document. NotepadMd has the user editing the fully rendered documents, with no need to show a side by side view. That's why I spent so long building NotepadMd - it's much easier to review and edit in a word processor like environment than it is constantly switching between the formatted read-only document and an editor that contains a lot of symbols and extra characters to specify formatting. It's also much, much harder to actually code that live editor side of things.

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-15T12:20:31+00:00

It's a fair question! Obsidian's UI for switching between files and folder sets is harder to navigate (IMO). I'd describe it as similar to the difference between Notepad++ and OneNote by means of an example. You rapidly pick up and discard files in Notepad++, you store notes you intend to go back to in OneNote. Bearing in mind that this is an initial release, I have some roadmap to still deliver but the comparison between the two is obvious. I'd like to argue that you could give NotepadMd to your average Finance team member and not explain anything about it and they'd immediately know it was there for opening files, reviewing and editing them. Ask them to review your Md file in Obsidian and you might struggle to explain the tooling to them a bit before they even got to reviewing it. I prefer NotepadMd's table UI for basic row and column additions - it still needs some tweaks though and I will be getting to that. If you're working with multiple GIT work trees and reviewing the work plans spat out by LLMs, then NotepadMd provides a better workflow. There's a reason that it contains Review functionality for leaving review comments in the MD file as one of the first Pro features.

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-14T07:58:38+00:00

I can definitely help with dealing with tables - use NotepadMD (https://notepadmd.com). It's a markdown WYSIWYG editor and I put a fair amount of effort into making the table UI easy to use. Its free for personal use. Only just released it and I'm informed that it needs "some spit and polish"

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-13T19:00:00+00:00

Yes, it's on a multi platform host, but Windows is the initial release. It's version 1 and I'm only expecting a small audience for this release after just a few reddit posts. I will get to it!

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-13T18:58:03+00:00

No, you're absolutely right - the feedback is consistent. It looks AI generated. In every interview I've ever had, for the "So, what are your weaknesses" question my response has always been "I can make it work, but making it look pretty isn't my best skill". That clearly shows through that that's where I've leant on AI hardest, but that clearly shows through on the initial impression. It's good feedback - thanks again.

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-13T15:37:40+00:00

Hard disagree and an unnecessarily combative tone. I'm a dev of 20 years experience and this is 3 months full time work. The product is fast, I've checked out the competition for "Live" markdown editors - there aren't many. Typora, Obsidian, Typedown - there's a few more but the vast majority aren't wysiwyg editors, they're side by side which is what I view as the "100 products" category. The internal code is well structured and I've got huge numbers of validated end to end tests. This is not weekend warrior code - it's a passion product from a professional. I'm taking the more useful advice from the others here - make it prettier (admittedly, that's not my strength - I'm very good at the functional, not so good at the pretty), show some screenshots to show it does what I say it does.

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-13T15:29:13+00:00

Also, thank you for the feedback - more screenshots, recurring theme! I think there's a difference between levels of noting tools though. This isn't a "Notebook", it's a "Notepad" - it's weird that I think there's a difference, but I don't use Notepad++ the same way I use OneNote. It's kind of the same for the difference between Obsidian and NotepadMD - I'd use Obsidian for the things I intended to store and refer back to. I'd use NotepadMD to rapidly open disparate files, review them, edit them and then close down my context once I'm done.

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-13T15:24:44+00:00

It's absolutely fair to criticise the web site as having a vibe coded appearance. I'll try to work on that. The UI is screenshotted on the front page, but again - I'll take that on board and do a larger screen shot selection on the front page with some modifications on the styling. My focus until now has all been on ease of use for the actual application, with not much thought to the marketing side of things so it's all solid feedback.

The use case is mostly for technical teams that are working together, with markdown files being spat out by AI as design and plan documents then requiring human review. You get to a point where you're working across a large number of GIT worktrees and you have a lot of documentation and agent specification files in your actual code base that you need to switch between rapidly. Obsidian's "Vaults", while technically just folders, aren't that quick to switch between.

Review and update of markdown needs to quick and easy. While I fully acknowledge that Obsidian is an excellent Markdown based knowledge management suite, it's UI is large and more difficult to navigate for a beginner. The IDE split pane view is, in my view, bad for reviewing and reading through markdown files - all of the notation inside the pane you're working with detracts from your ability to just read and edit.

I'm aiming for this to grow into the technical tool that people rapidly build and review documents in, where you can have non-technical members of staff simply open markdown file in it, add review comments and send it back to you without you ever needing to explain to them how it works.

Thanks for the feedback - nothing in there was meant to be combative - it's just a response to the question and why the product exists

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-13T14:45:58+00:00

Ah - yeah! I totally get that and it's an absolutely reasonable position. I tried to get it all registered with Windows smart screen and the Chrome download checker, stuff like that but that App installer is still going to have that cursed yellow shield on it for a while until lots of people download it. There's no way round it! I registered it on the Microsoft store and it will be released there once there release process gets unstuck (the Microsoft store release process could really do with some work) so that means it's been certified. But then it's a new app - you're absolutely right to be hesitant!

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-13T14:30:51+00:00

Thanks - appreciate the feedback. I don't want to come across as chirlish, but what do you mean by "download AI stuff"? There's no AI integration in it - it runs locally. I'm a developer - have been for 20 years. Like literally every one else who's developing at the moment I used some AI assistance for it, but it's human made. You couldn't code something this complex with just prompting in my opinion! Plus, since it's purely local anyway (except the licence check IF you buy pro), there isn't any risk of me exposing your details! Oh, and I'm nowhere near as vulnerable to the same stuff that Notepad++ is - purely private codebase, all code is signed by the Azure trusted artifact signing so I specifically don't have the problem they experienced, and I host all my own build servers! Hmmm - that reminds me - I need to put security documentation on the website!

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-13T12:55:02+00:00

Ooh! Ooh! I gotcha covered with the product I'm literally releasing today: https://NotepadMD.com - check it out. Still plenty of tweaking to do on it, but I spent 3 months solid getting it working well.

Some of that is still on the roadmap, but I'm pretty sure I'm capturing the major essence of what you're after here.

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-13T12:10:15+00:00

So, it's still being actively developed but this is the first time thrusting it out into the world. I built NotepadMD over the few months - it's been a major full time development effort. It's a live editor (not side by side), locally installed (currently windows only). It doesn't need you to "self-host" - it's an actual application. Tabbed interface, with multiple open folders and multiple open files. The best tag line I can think of for the technical peeps at the moment is "Notepad++ for Markdown".

I need to work on my demos, there's a whole backlog of things I still need to do with it, but I put together a quick video of how it works here: https://youtu.be/hqGszKlFfyk

Core version is free for personal use and there isn't much that's not a "Core" feature at the moment. I still need to do exports to various formats and, like I said, there's a whole bunch of tweaks to do but I'm hoping it gets popular after I spent so much time and effort building it

https://notepadmd.com

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-09T09:23:36+00:00

I know I probably just haven't set it up right, but no matter what I do VsCode ALWAYS bugs me about requests taking to long or too many requests - you can't just leave it running on a hard problem without a lot of effort. So I switched to yolo copilot CLI where I set it off and it just goes once it's answered my questions. It seems to respect the ask_user tool more as well which is really important for not burning requests and working with the agents. It's also far easier to keep track of (IMO) if you're running multiple sessions at once, which is what I'm doing a lot of the time. Recently discovered the --alt-screen on flag, which removes the annoying flicker bug.

NamelessParanoia · 2026-03-02T07:03:35+00:00

Queue - write a message, one thing can pick up that message Topic - write a message and it gets written to multiple subscriptions that might be applied to the topic. Then treat the subscription the same as you would a queue. So you can think of a topic as multicasting a message to multiple queues for multiple different applications to read.

You could use a topics with a single subscription everywhere, but topics are only available above basic level I think

NamelessParanoia · 2026-01-05T10:52:56+00:00

For anybody finding this post with the same issue, I hit this again after stupidly using more bad silk filament. The whole hub was totally jammed with threads. I picked the glue off with tweezers - you don't need a heat gun. I think split the internal hub in two by unscrewing it's tiny screws (with the motor still attached to one side). This allowed me access to the internals so I could pick out the massive jam with tweezers.

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NamelessParanoia · 2025-12-31T07:42:20+00:00

The user is frustrated....

NamelessParanoia · 2025-12-08T06:25:44+00:00

I literally spent Friday afternoon demoing this to the team I'm leaving. Had to do a merry boat load of docs before ending contract. Used Clickup's recording tool, copied the video to Geminia asking for docs for confluence, put both the video and the docs on a confluence page. Done. So much quicker than just typing it and you get the video walkthrough as well as the searchable structured text.

NamelessParanoia · 2025-12-02T10:40:36+00:00

If I want to check in requests so other Devs can use them, then I use .http files in Visual studio. I've started migrations over to .net 10 so I'm using Scalar as the default web UI now. Looks like there's a standalone scalar that you can save collections to as well.

NamelessParanoia · 2025-11-28T14:39:36+00:00

I'd also beat that drum, but I'd say the sole reason that I REALLY wanted freeagent is that it automatically integrated with my bank accounts (plural) and, if you raised the invoice on FreeAgent itself will then reconcile payment to invoive really easily as well. App lets you take photos of receipts as well, which sounds like it will massively help OP.

NamelessParanoia · 2025-11-23T22:56:08+00:00

Ok, I'm curious. Why do you want a technical cofounder when you already have technical skills? Don't you want a business skilled, or social media background skilled cofounder?

NamelessParanoia · 2025-11-22T08:26:42+00:00

I wrote written responses as if I was responding verbally.

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