I built a lightweight Markdown editor (~15 MB) with live preview, KaTeX, and Mermaid support

zhitong — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 07:34:54 +0000

Hey r/markdown! I've been working on SoloMD, a cross-platform Markdown editor focused on simplicity.

Key features:

Live preview (markers hide when cursor leaves the line)
KaTeX math rendering ($E=mc^2$)
Mermaid diagrams
Focus mode & typewriter mode
Export to HTML/PDF/DOCX
Multi-encoding support (UTF-8, GBK, Big5, Shift_JIS)

Why I built it:
I wanted something lighter than Obsidian (~250 MB) and Typora (~80 MB), that works offline and doesn't require a subscription. SoloMD is about 15 MB installed.

It's free, open source (MIT), and available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Website: https://solomd.app
GitHub: https://github.com/zhitongblog/solomd

I'd love to hear what features you'd want in a Markdown editor!
r/opensource
Title
SoloMD: A lightweight, open-source Markdown editor built with Tauri 2 + Rust (MIT license)
Body
I just released SoloMD, a cross-platform Markdown editor I've been building.

Tech stack:

Tauri 2 (Rust backend, system webview)
Vue 3 + TypeScript
CodeMirror 6

Why open source matters here:

No telemetry, no accounts, no cloud dependency
MIT licensed – use it however you want
Fully offline, your files never leave your machine

Features:

~15 MB installed (no bundled Chromium)
Live Markdown preview
KaTeX math, Mermaid diagrams
Multi-encoding (GBK/Big5/Shift_JIS auto-detection)
Export to HTML/PDF/DOCX

GitHub: https://github.com/zhitongblog/solomd
Website: https://solomd.app

Contributions welcome! Looking for feedback on the editor experience.

DEV Community: zhitong

I built a lightweight Markdown editor (~15 MB) with live preview, KaTeX, and Mermaid support