Markdot

A Mac-native markdown viewer and editor.

README.md

EditPreview

Markdot

CLAUDE.md

BACKLOG.md

CHANGELOG.md

README.md

docs

PRD.md

SESSIONS.md

README

Markdot opens a .md file in well under a second and renders it the way you wish every editor did. Double-click in Finder, it just appears.

Why it exists

Xcode was the default handler for markdown. It takes the better part of ten seconds to boot, and once it's up it shows you one file with no sense of the project around it. Markdot fixes both.

Open a file, see every other .md in the project beside it. Edit, preview, done.

Two modes

Preview — clean rendered markdown, the view you're reading now.
Edit — a real text editor with syntax highlighting and line numbers.

Toggle them with ⌘E. Jump to any file with ⌘P.

# set it as your default handler
open -a Markdot README.md

MarkdownUTF-8Ln 1, Col 17 files

Markdot rendering its own README, in its own preview style.

I open markdown files all day. So I built the opener I wanted.

Working in Claude Code means living in CLAUDE.md, PRD.md, and a pile of notes. macOS handed all of those to Xcode, which is a heavy IDE doing a job a viewer should do. It boots slow and shows one file at a time.

Markdot takes the file type back. It launches cold in under a second, renders the file cleanly, and puts every other markdown file in the project right there in a sidebar so you can move between them without leaving the window.

The part that matters

It knows what project you're in.

Open one file and Markdot walks up the folder tree looking for a .git directory or a CLAUDE.md, finds the project root, then scans it for every markdown file and shows them in a sidebar. It skips the noise folders (node_modules, .build, and friends) and watches the directory live, so when Claude Code writes a new file mid-session it shows up on its own.

Built for hands that stay on the keyboard.

Native window tabbing, secure state restoration, autosave in place. It behaves like a Mac app because it is one, written in AppKit and SwiftUI on NSDocument.

⌘EFlip between edit and preview

⌘PQuick-open any file in the project

⌘⇧FSearch across every markdown file

⌘1Show or hide the project sidebar

⌘NNew .md in the current folder

How it's built.

An NSDocument app with no sandbox, so it can read a whole project tree. The editor is a TextKit 2 NSTextView; the preview is a WKWebView rendering swift-markdown output through the same stylesheet you see up top. The sidebar uses the macOS 26 Liquid Glass treatment.

SwiftSwiftUIAppKitClaude Code

It's my daily driver now. Double-click a .md anywhere on the machine and Markdot is what opens.