Writer Computer

Writer Computer is a free and open-source markdown editor for macOS. It is about a 6 MB download (under 10 MB installed), starts faster than Apple Notes and Obsidian, and opens very large workspaces instantly. It is made for people who keep their writing in plain-text folders, such as Obsidian vaults, docs repos and personal wikis: open a folder and edit its files in place, and they stay ordinary markdown on your disk. Download it for macOS from writer.computer.

In the app and in casual use it is just "Writer". It is built with Tauri v2, React, Zustand, CodeMirror, and Rust. The app keeps documents on disk, respects workspace .gitignore rules, supports multiple windows, renders extended markdown such as tables and Mermaid diagrams, and ships with a signed macOS release flow.

Repository

• apps/desktop/ — Tauri desktop app.
• apps/desktop/src/ — React frontend.
• apps/desktop/src-tauri/src/ — Rust commands, workspace state, watcher, updater, and CLI integration.
• apps/website/ — landing page.
• docs/ — project and agent workflow docs.
• SPECs/ — feature specs and design notes.

Development

This repo uses Vite+ through the vp CLI. Use vp instead of calling the package manager or Vite tooling directly.

vp install
vp dev

Validation

vp check
vp test

Rust validation runs from the Tauri crate:

cd apps/desktop/src-tauri
cargo test
cargo clippy
cargo fmt --check

Privacy

Writer is local-first and stays that way. It ships opt-in usage telemetry that is off until you turn it on, never sees your documents, file names, or paths, and is not even compiled into builds made from a clone of this repo. docs/telemetry.md lists every event and property, and the three independent ways to keep it off.

Releases

macOS releases are cut locally with scripts/distribute.sh. See docs/releasing.md for the signed, notarized release workflow and updater publishing details.