https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/e4f23bf3-06c9-4151-9f9a-601e3c86451a
[!NOTE]
Imark opens reading, and reading is what it is for. The switch in the toolbar turns it into an editor for the file you already have open — see Editing — and comments go into the document itself, as HTML comments, so they travel with it.
What it does
- Editing, when you ask for it — one switch in the toolbar, and the page becomes the file: line numbers, Markdown in colour, a bar beside every line you have changed,
⌘S to write it. Reading is the state it opens in
- Comments in the file — select, comment, edit or delete, and the note lives in the document as an HTML comment, so it survives being emailed, committed, or opened in anything else.
⌘Z undoes any of it
- Task lists you can tick — press the box on a
- [ ] item and the tick is saved to the .md file, so the document goes back with your choice in it
- Quick Look previews — the space bar in the Finder renders the document, not raw text, using the same engine as the app
- Live reload — saving in your editor updates the view in under 300ms, keeping your scroll position, and it survives the delete-and-rename that editors call an atomic save
- Foldable outline — headings in the sidebar, with sections you can collapse; past twenty entries it opens folded, so a changelog is one row per version
- Outline rail — a tick per heading down the edge of every document, tapering around the pointer, with a card that names the section before you commit to going there
- Wiki-links —
[[note]] resolves against the folder and opens in the same window, with back and forward history
- The folder and the recents — every
.md beside the open document, plus the last five you opened from anywhere else
- Everything GitHub-flavoured — tables, task lists, footnotes, front matter as a header card you can put away from the View menu, syntax highlighting, Mermaid diagrams, KaTeX maths
- Actions on a selection — comment on it, translate it on device, or search the web for it in your default browser
- Find with a counter —
⌘F highlights every hit and tells you which one you are on
- Tabs — several documents in one window, with everything macOS gives a tabbed app:
⌘⇧[ and ⌘⇧], drag a tab out, Merge All Windows
- Offline where it counts — documents render with every request blocked by a content security policy, KaTeX fonts embedded, remote images refused on purpose
Screenshots
| Document window | Quick Look preview |
|---|
| |
Both are rendering testdata/showcase.md. For the full
sweep — every construction, every kind of comment, and enough headings that the
outline folds itself — open testdata/everything.md.
Install
brew install --cask migsilva89/imark/imark
Or download the latest release and drag Imark.app into /Applications. The disk image is signed and notarised, so it opens without a Gatekeeper warning.
macOS 14 or later. Imark checks once a day when you leave the option on in
Settings. When a new version exists, click Install and Relaunch — the app
downloads it, verifies both signatures, replaces itself and opens again.
To make it the default for .md: launch it with no document open and click Make Imark the default for .md, or use the same item in the Imark menu. Once it is the default, both quietly disappear.
From a terminal
Imark ▸ Install the imark Command… links imark into /usr/local/bin, or
into ~/.local/bin when that first one belongs to root — the alert says which,
before it writes anything.
imark notes.md # opens it in the copy already running
imark notes notes.md # the notes somebody left in it, as text
imark skills # agent presence and skill/command status
imark skills install # install missing files and update shipped copies
imark skills update # update existing shipped copies only
The skills commands run without opening a window. They use the same setup as
the app for Claude Code and Codex, preserve edited files, and never install
plugins or change agent settings. Status distinguishes missing, current,
outdated and edited files, and lists unsupported agents it finds.
imark skills --help explains the commands. Exit code 1 means missing or
outdated files for a present agent, no supported agents, or an error; 2 means
invalid arguments. Edited files are kept and do not cause a non-zero exit.
A document already open comes forward instead of opening twice. This is separate
from making Imark the default for .md on purpose: open notes.md should still
go to your editor.
Editing
The toolbar has one switch: an eye and a pencil. The eye is the app you know —
nothing on screen offers to change the file. The pencil replaces the page with
the document as text, in a plain editor: line numbers, Markdown in colour, a bar
in the gutter beside every line that differs from the file on disk, and the
system's own find bar with its counter and its replace field.
⌘S writes it. Until you do, live reload stands still — following the file
is the reason this app exists and also the one thing that could erase what you
typed, so while there is anything unsaved the window stops watching. The close
button carries the system's edited dot, Revert throws the buffer away and reads
the file again, and closing the window or opening another document asks first.
A save cannot land on somebody else's work: it goes through the same check every
comment does, and if the file moved since Imark read it the save is refused and
says so. ⌘Z afterwards puts the document back the way it was.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
