MarkText installs per architecture, not universally, and its Pandoc support is only partial

No universal macOS build, and Ventura is the floor

MarkText requires macOS 13 Ventura or later. Universal builds are not published, so you choose between marktext-mac-arm64 and marktext-mac-x64 DMG files on the release page. Picking the wrong one for your Mac means downloading again. Homebrew users can skip that choice:

brew install --cask mark-text

Note that the cask name is mark-text with a hyphen, while the app and the Chocolatey and Winget packages use marktext. Anyone on macOS 12 or earlier has no supported build from the current line.

Windows installers come in x64 and arm64, per user or machine wide

MarkText requires Windows 10 or 11. The setup wizard ships as marktext-win-x64 and marktext-win-arm64 setup executables, and it asks whether to install for the current user or for the whole machine. Package managers are also supported:

choco install marktext

winget install marktext

Each needs its own tool installed first. A machine-wide install suits shared computers; a per-user install avoids administrator rights but leaves other accounts without the editor.

Linux setup lives on the website, not in the README

The README gives no Linux command. It sends Linux users to the installation page at marktext.me/docs/installation, and all binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows sit on the GitHub release page. The repository's package.json defines build:linux:x64 and build:linux:arm64 scripts, so both architectures are built. If no version exists for your system, the project asks you to open an issue. The consequence is that distribution-specific steps, such as for Ubuntu, have to be read from the website rather than from the repository.

CommonMark and GFM in full, Pandoc only selectively

The editor follows the CommonMark Spec and the GitHub Flavored Markdown Spec, and supports Pandoc Markdown only selectively. Extensions cover KaTeX math, front matter and emojis. Export targets are HTML and PDF. Editing modes include Source Code, Typewriter and Focus, with themes such as Cadmium Light and Material Dark, and images can be pasted from the clipboard. If your documents rely on Pandoc syntax outside the supported subset, MarkText will not render them as Pandoc would, and you will still need Pandoc itself for other output formats.

Building from source needs Node 22.12 and pnpm 10

The repository is a pnpm monorepo named marktext-monorepo at version 0.24.0-dev, with engines set to node >=22.12.0 and pnpm >=10, and packageManager pinned to [email protected]. Root scripts forward to the marktext package: start, dev, test, typecheck, and per-platform builds such as build:mac:arm64 and build:win:x64. There is also a rebuild-native script. Full build instructions are at marktext.me/docs/dev/build. An older Node toolchain will not meet the engines requirement, so check node --version first.

The monorepo checks licenses and lint before code lands

Beyond building, the root package.json carries the project's quality gates. The check script runs pnpm lint and then pnpm typecheck, where lint is eslint --cache across the repository and format is prettier --write. A postinstall step runs tsx scripts/postinstall.ts after every install, and minify-locales compresses translation files through scripts/minify-locales.ts. Two scripts deal with dependencies' licenses: gen-third-party generates a third-party license file from scripts/generateThirdPartyLicense.ts, and validate-licenses checks them. The repository also has a .husky/ directory for Git hooks, an AGENTS.md file, and perf:inspect and perf:inspect-brk scripts for profiling the app with the Node inspector. For a contributor this means a pull request has to pass ESLint, Prettier and TypeScript checks, and a new dependency brings a license check with it, so adding a package is not just a one-line change to package.json.

Questions go through issues, and the README is translated into nine languages

MarkText has no separate forum. Questions are welcome as GitHub issues, and the project asks that you keep the default issue template when opening one; direct pull requests are welcomed too, after reading the Contributing Guide in .github/CONTRIBUTING.md. User documentation lives at marktext.me/docs/introduction and developer documentation at marktext.me/docs/dev/overview, with a changelog at marktext.me/docs/changelog. The README is translated into Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, French, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean and Bengali under docs/i18n. The consequence of an issue-only support channel is that usage questions and bug reports share one queue, so search existing issues before filing, and expect the template to ask for details about your platform and version.

A 0.x line with a fresh release candidate

MarkText is not archived. The last push to the develop branch was on 2 November 2026. Releases v0.22.0 on 18 October 2026 and v0.23.0 on 21 October 2026 were followed by v0.24.0-rc.1 on 3 November 2026. The Contributing section says MarkText is in development, and version numbers remain below 1.0. Release candidates sit next to stable releases on the release page, so pick a tagged stable version unless you want to test the candidate.

Editorial conclusion

MarkText suits writers who want a free, open-source Markdown editor with realtime preview, CommonMark and GitHub Flavored Markdown, KaTeX math and HTML or PDF export on desktop. It is the wrong choice if your documents depend on full Pandoc Markdown or if you are on macOS older than 13 Ventura or Windows older than 10. Before installing, check your CPU architecture, since macOS builds come only as separate arm64 and x64 installers.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Official documentation
2. Official README
3. Project repository
4. Release notes