> If I want to see the original Markdown syntax, I should be able to switch to that view just as easily.

This doesn't really map well to existing document opening conventions, so the author's hypothetical built-in Markdown viewer/editor doesn't really fit into any existing system app. For example, if Apple modified TextEdit.app to open Markdown files in the same way it handles RTF documents, it would cover the formatted display case, but not editing the source. They would have to add some third mode (or build an entirely separate app) to handle switching between Markdown source and formatted views, deal with displaying malformed syntax, etc. Not to mention handling the various differences between Markdown flavors.

I felt the same but if you put it into Claude code Opus 5.5 can build you a program that will open faster than anything you’ve ever used before if you ask for it. I asked for it and it’s instantaneous. Faster than literally any other macOS app.

It opens and displays a markdown file faster than bitwarden’s chrome extension displays its fill UI.

The future is almost here. Formats and so on are on the threshold of irrelevance in the next few years for this kind of consumer use. It’s hard to even tell if the time it takes us to summarize a text will be the time a future agent takes to write a specialized program that extracts what you need from the file. “Native” support will soon be irrelevant.

Even my solution is yesterday’s solution.

Shockingly, I could only find about 3, and all sucked in their own special way.

I have the simplest of requirements: just format it and show it like a PDF. Either the app doesn't remember its position and always restarts in an awkward landscape format, or it insists in showing a "file tree" side bar, no simple file viewer.

I am not sure its that important that its a default. Markdown is primarily and editable format that is easily converted to a readable one - its the inverse of PDF which is a readable format that is hard to edit.

1. There’s no acknowledgement of the rich ecosystem of markdown dialects, which add all sorts of incredible features as simple as inline citations and as complex as full roles and directives. They all need highlighting.

2. There’s author claims to like markdown, but then it becomes clear that they don’t like markdown itself, they just like it being behind a rendered WYSIWYG editor. Which… :( headers should look like headers and tables should look like tables, yes, but not at the cost of removing any of the syntax characters! If you do, you’re sacrificing the whole point of the format: ease of modification.

Clearly their heart is in the right place, though. I absolutely loathe sites that don’t support markdown; there is *zero* reason not to do something _this_ important! ~~I dare say it would be something that the three mods and their uninvolved monarch should go to bed every night feeling ashamed of…~~

⟩ Write me a Markdown file viewer for ${OS} that shows Markdown files as firmatted documents by default. A button should toggle between the formatted view and the raw Markdown file as plain text. Work the task to completion and make no mistakes.

Of course, there are services that do that for you, ranging from Hugo to Obsidian Publish. But they all add a level of complexity that you have to manage.

Also, this makes user-level styling much simpler. This is what any “Reading mode” does, but without reverse-engineering the content from a soup of tags and classes.

Mobile computing should be more like desktop computing.

We need a better markup language.