Marked 3 Is Officially Out

Brett Terpstra just shipped Marked 3. It’s the biggest update in the app’s history. After more than a decade of Marked, that’s impressive.

If you’ve never used it, Marked does one job. You write Markdown in whatever editor you like, and Marked shows you a live, rendered preview in its own window. Save the file and the preview updates on its own. It sounds small. It isn’t. Once you’ve written a long document this way, going back to an editor that can’t show you the finished page feels like working blind.

Version 3 is more than a point release. Two-way DOCX support means Marked can now move your writing in and out of Word. Brett added Custom Processors and Custom Rules for writers who want exact control over how their Markdown renders. There’s also a Style Stealer that copies the look of a site you write for, so your preview matches what your readers will actually see.

The list keeps going. Built-in Mermaid diagrams, full MathJax support, new CommonMark GFM and Kramdown processors, updated Scrivener live preview, EPUB export with custom CSS, new PDF options, and a speed reading mode.

Marked 3 ships with early bird pricing of $2.99 a month or $29.99 for the year. Brett also sells a permanent unlock for people who are done collecting subscriptions, and it’s included with Setapp. There’s a free seven-day trial on the Mac App Store and the direct Paddle version.

Brett has been building Mac tools for about as long as I’ve been writing about them. Marked is one of his best.

Brett Terpstra’s Conductor

I’m a little late with this one, but I wanted to congratulate my friend Brett Terpstra on the release of Conductor. This new command line utility is an add-on for Brett’s successful Marked app. As the name implies, this utility acts as a train conductor for Marked 2, allowing you to set up and run custom processors to make Marked 2 even more powerful and automation-friendly.

Brett goes deeper into Conductor in this post. He even added some functionality a few days ago.

Marked 2.5

My pal Brett Terpstra recently released Marked, version 2.5. If you’re not familiar with Marked, it’s a native macOS app for previewing Markdown and other text markup languages, as well as HTML and OPML files. With Marked, you can see rendered, styled versions before publishing. Marked 2 updates with changes whenever you save using the text editor of your choice. In combination with your favorite Markdown editor (or any text editor), Marked 2 is an excellent writing tool, particularly if you write in Markdown.

There’s a bunch of new features with the new version including support for a pile of new applications (including Scrivener 3). Spelling and grammar check is also now included for all users. (It no longer requires an in-app purchase.)

Marked's New "Ink" Preview Style. Click to enlarge. — Marked’s New “Ink” Preview Style. Click to enlarge.

My favorite feature, however, is the Edward Tufte inspired preview style: Ink. Of course, Brett would include a Tufte-inspired theme and of course it is gorgeous.

You can buy Marked directly from Brett or, if you are a SetApp subscriber, you already have access to it.