The team behind Bear just released the beta of Lettera, a native Markdown editor for the Mac. It grew out of Panda, the editor they built for Bear 2, and it’s now evolved into a standalone app.

The feature list is the kind that makes a plain-text nerd lean in. Live CommonMark rendering, so the Markdown syntax hides while you write. Open a single file, or point it at a whole folder as your workspace. Tables, code blocks, inline images, MathJax, and a table of contents for moving around a long document. Export to PDF, ePub, and HTML when it’s time to send the work somewhere.

I have aspired toward these bespoke Markdown editors for years. They look beautiful and focused, and I want to love them. And yet I keep gravitating back to Drafts, because I never leave text in these editors very long and Drafts tools make it so easy to manage. A pretty editor is lovely right up until you need the one feature it doesn’t have.

So I’m going in clear-eyed. I’m looking forward to spending real time with Lettera to see how it feels. Either way, it’s worth a look.

You can grab the beta through TestFlight, and the app has a home at lettera.md.