 I do a lot of writing and over the last four or five months or so I've been searching for the perfect markdown editor and I've not found it because nothing is ever perfect and I'm kind of picky but during that time I've tried quite a few different markdown editors and what I thought I'd do today is talk about the five favorites that I found over the last few months. Now just because an application did not make this list doesn't mean that it's not good. There are a few that I've tried. There are also really good markdown editors but I wanted to kind of narrow it down to five so that's what I've done. Let's go ahead and talk about the five best markdown editors for Linux. Let's go and jump in. So the first one I'm putting on the list is Vim. Now Vim is my favorite text editor overall but when it comes to markdown it's probably towards the bottom of the list and that's the reason why I'm putting it number five. It does a pretty good job of doing the regular markdown stuff but because you can only use one font size it doesn't do a very good job of showing you where like the editors are and stuff like that so it doesn't really perform well in that aspect. What I like about it the most is that it's Vim. I know that sounds silly but if you're used to using Vim if you're used to writing in Vim doing markdown in Vim makes a ton of sense because you are already familiar with all the wonderful keybindings being able to move around using the Vim movements and things like that and it just works really really well. Now obviously not everyone likes Vim because of the Vim keybindings and stuff like that that people just don't really care for but if you are already a Vim user and you are interested in starting running or if you're a writer or whatever Vim is a good option or if you're already a writer Vim is actually a really good option for markdown specifically because it has a ton of the stuff that makes Vim grade itself. The next one on the list is called apostrophe. Now apostrophe is the simplest application on this list. It does markdown and that's basically it. Now obviously it does have a few other features but at the end of the day what it does is markdown and it does it fairly well. It allows you to do headings links all that stuff that you'd expect in a markdown application and it does have live preview if you want it. So if you want to preview your markdown alongside your editing screen you can do that or you can have a full screen preview window however you want to do it. It works fairly well. It doesn't do the best auto transitioning your text from markdown into the final form right inside of the editor whereas some of the other editors do a good job of when you write a heading it transforms into a heading almost immediately. Apostrophe does not do that but that's not a big deal for a lot of people. People for the most part really don't care what the markdown looks like until the end. That's one of the things about writing about markdown. Now for me personally this one was a little bit too simple but if what you're looking for is a pure markdown app that doesn't have a lot of frills no synchronization between different applications or anything like that apostrophe is a good option for you. The third application on the list is an application called ghostwriter and ghostwriter is a fantastic app in any other situation this may be the best application on the list. It comes with a ton of different features and one of the neatest things is if you're writing like a novel or something long form in markdown ghostwriter actually does a really good job of counting your words and counting your productivity while you're using ghostwriter. So for example once you open up ghostwriter and start working it's going to actually time your session and it can tell you how many words you've written since you set down and started writing. It'll also tell you what level your writing is whether it's very easy to read or very hard to read it will tell you how many characters you've written all this stuff and the sidebar in ghostwriter is one of the most useful things of all the applications that I'm going to cover today. It gives you all this extra information plus there's a cheat sheet so if you're not as into markdown as a lot of people are and you don't know it as well the little cheat sheet that comes with ghostwriter can really help you kind of realize what the power of markdown actually is. It gives you all of the stuff that you need to know in order to do the basics when it comes to markdown which is really nice. Ghostwriter does have a lot of options but the best one in my opinion is that it lets you create your own themes. So if you are into kind of creating your own writing space ghostwriter is probably the best one because it allows you to tweak what everything in the application looks like. So while it may not have the most settings out of everything on this list. So that is ghostwriter. It's one of my favorites and honestly like I said on any other day this would probably be the application that I consider the best because it really does a fantastic job of being a markdown editor without getting a ton of stuff in the way. The next app on the list is called mark text and mark text is the application that I've been using for the last few months when it comes to actually doing my writing. And the things that I like about mark text is that it really does a good job of handling very large documents. It obviously does all the markdown stuff really well. It has customizable key binding. So if you are into into customizing your key bindings you can do that. It also one of my favorite things about it is that if you have a specific folder or directory where all of your writing stuff happens you can open that file in mark text and then it will remember that file always or at least until you change files. And that's really nice if you do all of your writing in one specific directory. So when you next time you open up mark text the file that all of your stuff is in is right there ready for you to go inside of the tree and you can just navigate to the document that you want to start editing or you can create a new one if you want whatever you need to do and that kind of saves you a little bit time. You don't have to go open up a directory to find where your stuff is as long as all of your stuff is in that one directory that you always work with mark text does have a few themes. It doesn't have the customizability of ghost writer. It comes to themes. It just has like four or five just regular themes that you can choose from. They're all very pretty but they're beyond those themes. There's not much customization when it comes to look and feel obviously you can do the font and stuff like in all these applications but the theme is kind of set between those three. Not a big deal but something to keep in mind. It does have a ton of settings. So if you are a tweaker when it comes to trying to make your application your own mark text is full of settings that you can tweak to your heart's content to determine how markdown functions how spelling functions how the editor looks and feels the key bindings as I mentioned before things like that and it's really nice especially like I said if you are into customizing how your editor looks and feels the last thing that I will mention is that it also has tabs now if you follow the channel for any amount of time you know that I'm a sucker for tabs and mark text has tabs it means that you can have multiple documents open up at the same time and you can just flick between them in tabs and it just works really really well I can't even there was a point there where I had like 12 or 14 documents open at the same time and I can just you know flip between them and it was simple as that now tabs really aren't all that special because a lot of markdown editors have tabs but mark text was the first app that I use that has had tabs and it's really nice though one of the coolest things is that you can have a whole bunch of documents open at the same time and then there's a little button when you hover over the open files that let you save all of them all at once that's really nice especially like I said if you use a whole bunch of tabs and you want to save them you can do so all with that just one button it's perfect though now the last application on the list is an application that I haven't actually used all that much and I didn't really care for when I first used it and that is obsidian now a lot of people swear by obsidian and at one point I would have told you those people were kind of crazy because it really is just kind of felt bloated to me like there's so much stuff going on here and for the most part if you're just looking for a markdown editor that's not really I mean it does mark down really well don't get me wrong I'm putting it number one on the list for a reason it does mark down fantastically well but when I first opened it up many many months ago I did not care for it because it is a knowledge base editor meaning that it's more of a one note replacement something like that maybe ever know something like that and it's you know it does really well for that but when you're searching for a markdown editor you don't really need all of that note taking stuff I mean maybe you are looking for a note taking application in which case maybe you also want to mark down editor and you're kind of putting those things together but for obsidian it always just felt more like a note taking application than a markdown editor but over the last couple weeks I've been trying it and obsidian is actually I mean it is fantastic it gives me a lot of the things that mark text and ghosts writer do and then kind of combines them my favorite one is that not only does it have tabs but allows you to do split screen so a lot of markdown editors will allow you to have one side be your editor one side be your live preview most of them actually do that and I think every single one on this list does that but with obsidian you can actually have two editors side by side so you can work on two different documents so kind of like splits and Vem or Emacs or something you can do that instead of obsidian and it is really really good so when it comes to actually using markdown in obsidian it does just as good a job as mark text you can do links lists all that stuff it works really well it has support for every part of markdown that you could possibly want including math tables forms things like that it works just fine with all that stuff you can also use the html block the code block all that stuff will work here just like it does in the others and on top of that you get all the stuff that works really well when it comes to note taking so you could use this for both your markdown editor and your note taking stuff now I'm never going to use the note taking stuff because I don't need it I use something else for notes but if that's something that appeals to you having both of those things in the same place that's really nice now the one thing about obsidian as I said is that it's a bigger thing than just a markdown editor so when you go into the settings you might be overwhelmed a little bit because there's a ton of stuff there that not only has to do with markdown but all of the other things that obsidian can do and it can do a ton of stuff it stores all of your stuff in a vault and that's probably my least favorite part of this is that yes you can open up documents you know that you have stored elsewhere you can easily do that it's really meant to be used with your vault and you can think of your vault as kind of a notebook in like one note or something like that it's kind of like that thing it's a it's a collection of all your documents in one place but if you don't use that you don't want to use it obsidian is really not the greatest when it comes to doing documents outside of that vault so it does allow you to do it so that's the reason why I didn't really know you know take points away for that but it's one of the things that I noticed it's really meant to be work with that vault now in terms of themes and customization it's has a light and a dark theme so it's not in turn it doesn't have the most themes but you can choose whatever accent color you want which does add to some of the customization it also has a very large selection of plugins so if you want to do things other than just markdown you can scroll through the plugins and it will do a fantastic job of you know giving you extra options and those can all be downloaded and installed right inside the app so you don't have to go to a github page or something and then transfer an XML or whatever file somewhere on your system it just downloads it right inside the application installs it it works really well if that's something that you need so those are the top five markdown editors that I've tried over the last few months and every single one of them does something really really well if you're looking for utter simplicity apostrophe is probably the one that you want to go with if you're looking for something that is much more complex obsidian is the one that you want to go with if you're already entrenched in the them ecosystem use them if you are less interested in the note-taking aspects of obsidian marktext is probably the best so when it comes to declaring the best of the best my selection is still going to be mark text simply because I don't need all the extra features of obsidian and mark text does a better job of handling documents outside of the vault now I put obsidian number one on this list simply because a it's it is really really good if you need a note-taking application or a knowledge-based application and you also want a markdown application it does all three of those things really really well and it has a ton of features and just the idea of being able to have two editors side-by-side in a split mode it just tickles the nerd in me I guess I really like that feature and I like their management of tabs the best of any of the applications here that just does a really good job of tab management and that's just kind of my thing it really just made me happy to see all that stuff and that's the reason why I got the number one spot despite the fact that I really do like mark text better in many different ways so that's it for this video if you have comments on these applications or if you have other applications that you'd like to suggest when it comes to mark down leave those in the comment section below I'd love to hear from you you can follow me on Twitter at the Linux cast you can follow me on masted on our odyssey those links will be in the video description along with all my other social media stuff the link to the website link to the store all that stuff in the video description below check it out you 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