v3.0 ships sync · E2EE · cloud-folder · web reader · semantic search · 14 AI providers · MCP server
A lightweight, distraction-free Markdown + plain text editor for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Built with Tauri 2 — under 15 MB installed.
curl -fsSL https://solomd.app/install.sh | bash irm https://solomd.app/install.ps1 | iex 
Three short stories. Pick the one that sounds like you.
Open a folder, hit focus mode, write. Markdown markup fades when the caret leaves the line. When the draft is done, Pandoc turns it into a PDF, DOCX, or EPUB without leaving the app.
Semantic search ranks paragraphs by meaning across your whole vault. Wikilinks and backlinks connect notes, @citekey citations carry through to Pandoc, and 14 AI providers translate or summarize on demand — keys stay in your OS keychain.
A 1.5 MB MCP sidecar exposes 8 read-only tools to Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client. Every save snapshots into a real local .git you own. WYSIWYG live edit and a `solomd` CLI keep you out of the GUI when you want.
Five principles that decide what we ship and what we say no to.
Files on disk. AI keys in the OS keychain. The semantic-search embedder runs in our Rust process — no model download, no relay.
Every claim on this site is checkable in the source. Read the security writeup or grep the repo yourself.
Read /security →Telemetry is opt-in only and content-free. There is no SoloMD account. The editor does not call home.
How we count things →Uninstall SoloMD and your notes are still there — UTF-8 text, in folders you picked, openable in any editor.
Ideas, polls, show-and-tell, Q&A. One developer, one room, no Discord.
See the community →A short list of features that actually matter — semantic search, version history, and an AI panel that lets you bring your own keys. The rest gets out of your way.
Push your vault to a private GitHub repo on every save; pull on a timer. Built on libgit2 + OS keychain — your data stays on your account, no SoloMD server, no subscription. GitLab / Gitea / any HTTPS git URL works too.
Optional per-vault passphrase. Argon2id → XChaCha20-Poly1305, ciphertext-only on the remote. Search / RAG / AI rewrite still work locally because plaintext stays on your device.
When your workspace already lives in a cloud-synced folder, SoloMD detects it and adds cross-device session restore on top — open the same vault on another machine and the same tabs come back.
One command-palette entry copies a solomd.app/share link for the active note. Reader-friendly Markdown render of any file in your public GitHub vault — no SoloMD account required to view.
⌘⇧F opens a search panel that ranks paragraphs by meaning, not just keywords. Runs entirely on your machine — no model file download, no network call, ever. Off until you flip the switch in Settings.
Fourth view mode (edit / split / live edit / preview). Headings render larger, **bold** shows bold without the asterisks, lists indent visually. Markup reveals when the caret enters the line.
Every ⌘S becomes a snapshot in a local .git inside your workspace. Sidebar history panel shows every commit; one click to restore. libgit2 vendored, no system git needed. Never auto-pushed.
⌘J on a selection. OpenAI · Claude · Gemini · xAI · Mistral · Groq · DeepSeek · Qwen · GLM · Kimi · Doubao · SiliconFlow · OpenRouter · Ollama. Keys live in the OS keychain. Direct vendor calls, no relay.
1.5 MB binary. Plug your vault into Claude Desktop / Cursor / Codex CLI. 8 read-only tools out of the box; write tools gated behind --allow-write. stdio only, no network port.
Markdown markers fade away when you leave a line. Headings get bigger, bold gets bold — no toolbars in the way. Synced split-pane scroll keeps editor and preview line-aligned.
Screenshot then ⌘V — image saves to _assets/ and inserts a markdown link. Click any image or Mermaid diagram in preview to pop a full-screen overlay; pinch or scroll to zoom.
Open a folder, browse files, ripgrep-style global search across every .md and .txt. ⌘P jumps to any file by fuzzy name.
13 code-block languages, KaTeX math, Mermaid diagrams, footnotes, YAML front-matter, ==highlight==. 8 themes (Light / Dark / Nord / Solarized / Monokai / Dracula / GitHub Light) + custom CSS.
Auto encoding detection (UTF-8 / GBK / Big5 / Shift_JIS) via chardetng. CJK word count, simplified ↔ traditional, pinyin export — none of which Typora or Obsidian do natively.
PDF (with KaTeX & Mermaid), Word .docx, HTML, EPUB, ODT, LaTeX, RTF. Drop in .docx / .pdf / .xlsx / .pptx / .csv and SoloMD converts them to Markdown on the spot.
~15 MB installer (vs Typora 70 MB / Obsidian 110 MB). Tauri 2 + Rust + Vue 3 + CodeMirror 6. Zero telemetry by default. Builds for macOS / Windows / Linux x64 / Linux ARM64.
⌘⌥P renders the active doc as fullscreen slides, split on `---`. Vim-style nav, code highlighting, KaTeX, Mermaid all work in slides.
`solomd open / new / list / search / cat` — open and grep notes from the terminal. One-line curl installer.
⌘⌥L runs Prettier — normalizes lists, tables, spacing. Front matter preserved.
First launch opens 4 in-memory tutorial tabs in your language (en / 中文). Reopen anytime via the command palette.
Full Vim emulation: hjkl, modes, visual, :w :q, macros. Toggle in Settings.
One click removes LLM junk: [cite_start], 【†source】, smart quotes, zero-width chars.
Dim non-active paragraphs. Keep cursor centered. Long-form writing without distraction.
⌘⇧K to access every command. Native menu bar on macOS / Windows / Linux.
Three differentiators no other Markdown editor in this category ships in core. Everything else is table stakes.
Obsidian, Typora and MarkText all skip this in core. SoloMD ⌘⇧F: on-device embedder, no model download, no network call.
Every ⌘S becomes a local .git snapshot — sidebar history panel restores in one click. Competitors leave you to wire git manually.
1.5 MB binary, 8 read-only tools. Plug your vault into Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Codex CLI.
| SoloMD | Typora | MarkText | Obsidian | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub-backed sync (you own the data) | ✅ v3.0 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ ($96/yr SoloMD-style? no — Obsidian Sync stores on Obsidian servers) |
| End-to-end encrypted vault | ✅ v3.0 | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ (Obsidian Sync only) |
| Local semantic search | ✅ v2.3 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ (paid plugins) |
| WYSIWYG live edit | ✅ v2.3 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| AutoGit version history | ✅ v2.2 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ (manual git) |
| MCP server bundled | ✅ v2.2 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 14 AI providers, BYOK | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ (1–2 per plugin) |
| Open source · MIT | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ (dormant) | ❌ |
| Installer size | ~15 MB | ~70 MB | ~80 MB | ~110 MB |
| Price | Free | $14.99 | Free | Free + $96/yr sync |
| Linux ARM64 build | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| CJK encoding (GBK/Big5) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| File import (DOCX/PDF/XLSX/PPTX) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | 🟡 (plugin) |
| Pandoc export (EPUB/ODT/LaTeX) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | 🟡 (plugin) |
| Slideshow / presentation mode | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | 🟡 (plugin) |
| Sync (CRDT, built-in) | ❌ v3 roadmap | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ (paid) |
Free and open source. MIT license. No account needed.
Looking for older versions? All releases →
Grep matches characters; semantic search matches meaning. Search "deployment" and you can also surface paragraphs about "rolling out", "shipping", "release". The embedder runs entirely in our Rust process — no model file download, no network call, no cloud. Off by default; flip the switch in Settings to opt in. Index lives in <workspace>/.solomd/embeddings.sqlite (auto-gitignored).
Yes. SoloMD is MIT-licensed open-source software. There is no paid tier, no account, no telemetry by default, no ads. If it helps your writing you can sponsor the developer, but you never have to.
In your OS keychain — Apple Keychain on macOS, Credential Manager on Windows, libsecret on Linux. Never in localStorage, never in a config file SoloMD writes. AI requests go directly from your machine to the provider you chose; SoloMD doesn't host any models or relay any traffic.
About 10–15 MB depending on the platform. That is roughly 6× smaller than Typora and 7× smaller than Obsidian, because SoloMD uses Tauri (system webview + Rust) instead of bundling Chromium.
Yes, fully. The editor itself makes zero network requests. Semantic search is local-only. AutoGit commits to a local repo and never auto-pushes. The only outbound traffic is (1) the optional GitHub-release update check on launch (off in Settings) and (2) the AI rewrite calls you explicitly trigger, which go straight to the provider you chose.
A single 1.5 MB sidecar binary (solomd-mcp) speaks the Model Context Protocol over stdio — no network port. Point Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client at your workspace and it gets 8 read tools (list_notes, read_note, search, get_backlinks, list_tags, get_outline, etc.) plus 2 write tools gated behind --allow-write. Path-traversal guarded, workspace-canonical containment.
SoloMD auto-detects encoding using the chardetng Rust crate when you open a file. UTF-8, UTF-16 LE/BE (with or without BOM), GBK, GB18030, Big5, Shift_JIS and many more are recognized and correctly displayed.
Not yet — built-in CRDT sync is on the v3 roadmap. For now SoloMD works perfectly with iCloud Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Syncthing, or any folder-based sync tool. Just save your notes inside a synced folder. Or use AutoGit + push to GitHub manually.
SoloMD intentionally omits a plugin system to stay lightweight, stable, and easy to audit. The features serious writers ask for — semantic search, version history, AI rewrite, image paste, KaTeX, Mermaid, focus mode, custom CSS — all ship in core.
SoloMD is a small open-source project that has not yet built up Microsoft SmartScreen reputation. Click "More info → Run anyway" once and it will not prompt again. We are working on a code-signing certificate.
Right-click any .md file → Open With → SoloMD → check "Always use this app". The bundled installer registers SoloMD as a handler for .md, .markdown, .mdown, .mkd, and .txt extensions.
Obsidian is a knowledge management tool with vaults, wiki links, backlinks, a graph view, and a plugin marketplace. SoloMD is a lightweight editor for writing Markdown files — but it ships some things Obsidian doesn't (semantic search in core, AutoGit, MCP server, 14 AI providers in one panel). Use Obsidian if you want a second brain with a plugin marketplace; use SoloMD if you want the writing tools without the plugin tax.
One maintainer, two front doors. WeChat for the Chinese community, Telegram channel for everyone else. GitHub Discussions works too — link below.
SoloMD is built and maintained by one developer in their free time. If it helps your writing, consider sponsoring — even a tiny amount keeps the project alive.
For international sponsors. Monthly or one-time, processed by Stripe.
Sponsor on GitHub →Worldwide one-time tip. Choose any amount in your currency.
Tip via PayPal →Open the Alipay app and scan the QR code below.
Open WeChat → Scan, point at the QR code below.
Sponsors get listed in the README and the in-app About dialog (with permission).