Flo StateTypewriter mode
The line you’re writing stays at the same height on screen, like paper feeding through a typewriter. ⌥⌘C turns it on or off.
A minimalist, high-performance markdown editor for macOS.
Pure Swift. No web view, no Electron: opens instantly, uses almost no CPU or memory, and your notes stay plain markdown files.
Free and open source · macOS 14 or later
Try me!
So light, your Mac can barely feel it.
Flo State launches in 0.1s and uses 50MB of memory and 0.0% of CPU when idle.
Flo State51 MB
Writer196 MB
Notion1,825 MB
Flo State0.0%
Writer3.0%
Notion14.6%
Exquisite, minimalist design.
Try it here!
Features
Checklists
- [ ] becomes a checkbox you can click. ⌘⇧9 turns lines into a checklist, and ⌘. checks off the item you’re on.
Heading folding
Collapse any section to its heading, so long documents stay easy to move around in.
Wiki links & autocomplete
Type [[ to link another note and pick it from the suggestions. Aliases, heading links and image embeds work too.
Tables
Plain GitHub-flavoured markdown tables, rendered as real tables with column alignment.
Mermaid diagrams
Flowcharts and sequence diagrams drawn right in the note from a fenced code block.
Math
Inline and block LaTeX, rendered with KaTeX.
Images
Paste or drop an image: it’s saved in an attachments folder next to your note and shown inline.
Plain files on disk
Every note is a .md file in a folder you choose, including iCloud Drive. No database, no lock-in.
Customizable themes
Light and dark themes, each with its own background, text, heading and accent colours, fonts and contrast. Start from a preset or make your own.
Pinned notes
Pin the notes you open all the time to the top of the sidebar, one click away from anywhere in your notebook.
Keyboard shortcuts for everything
Formatting, headings, lists, folding, tabs and search all have shortcuts, so your hands never leave the keyboard.
Open source
The code is on GitHub under the GPL-3.0 licence. Read it, build it, send a pull request.
github.com/Altimor/flo-stateQuestions
Any plans on releasing a Linux / Windows version?
What? No.
Where are my notes stored?
Wherever you want. Flo State opens a folder of plain .md files, in any location, including iCloud Drive. Other apps, scripts and Git can read and edit them too.
Is it free?
Yes. Flo State is free and open source, under the GPL-3.0 licence.
Which versions of macOS does it support?
macOS 14 Sonoma and later.
Can I use it with my existing Obsidian vault?
Yes. A vault is a folder of markdown files, so you can open the same folder in Flo State. Wiki links, image embeds and front matter are supported.
Does it sync?
Flo State doesn’t run a sync service. Put your notebook in iCloud Drive (or Dropbox, or a Git repository) and it syncs the way any other files do.