Release notes

What changed in each build of mrkdwn, newest first. mrkdwn is in pre-release testing, so every build so far has gone to TestFlight testers rather than the App Store. Each entry says which.

TestFlight

mrkdwn 1.5

macOS 1.5.0 (20), with the iPhone and iPad release candidate cut from the same tree

The largest release since 1.0. The iPhone and iPad app finished catching up with the Mac, attributed text learned to say who wrote it, and the first run was rebuilt from scratch.

New features

  • Your notes say who wrote them. Mark any selection as Human, AI or Reference and see it coloured by author. Thirteen AI agents each have their own identity, built from the vendor’s own brand colour and balanced so no one agent shouts louder than the rest. Quoted sources get a quieter voice of their own, and the marks travel between your devices.
  • iPhone and iPad feel like the platform. A floating command bar, search and compose where your thumb is, and drag to move notes and folders. Tags are places you can open, with their own actions.
  • Maths renders by default. Inline, as part of the line rather than a block apart. Abbreviations and text graphs render too.
  • Reader joins Writer and Split. Zen is now a modifier you drop into with ⌘D, rather than a fourth mode to get lost in.
  • The editor width is a measure in characters. Not a fraction of your window, on both platforms, so the line length stays readable when you maximise.
  • mrkdwn ships its own typeface. Buena Mono is in the app, not just on the store page.
  • PDFs lay out on the paper you chose. And you see the pages before you send them.
  • Default Markdown app. mrkdwn can be your default app for .md files, and it asks exactly once.
  • Shortcuts. On macOS, and mrkdwn offers itself to Apple Shortcuts on iOS.
  • Smaller things. Line numbers, a hideable formatting toolbar, and a title menu on the Mac.

Improvements

  • Back to the caret. Reopening a note puts you back where you were typing, not at the top of the file.
  • A quieter editor bar on the Mac. Six groups down to three. The view-mode switcher moved up to the window toolbar, where it stays visible in Reader and when the toolbar is hidden.
  • A four-step first run. It skips the steps it has nothing to ask you.
  • Settings in nine tabs. They say where your preferences actually live, and the licence text of every bundled component now ships inside the app.
  • Themes all the way through. Each theme carries its accent through the whole app, with a caret of its own, and the theme preview renders in the theme.
  • Bring your own folder. Point mrkdwn at a folder you already have and edit those files where they are.

Bug fixes

  • PDF export. It threw away every page but the first.
  • Pasting on iPhone. A paste could crash the app, and a new note opened with the template already in it instead of empty.
  • Evicted files. Notes were moved to Trash when iCloud had only evicted the file. The note was never gone, and is no longer treated as if it were.
  • Frontmatter. Frontmatter mrkdwn does not own is left exactly as it was, so anything another tool writes into your .md survives a round trip.
  • Start Writing. It no longer hides your sidebar forever. It opened the first note in Zen and quietly made that the permanent default, with no way back shown on screen.
  • Locked notes and Trash on iPhone. Locked notes could not be opened, and the Trash row could not be reached.
  • Knowledge graph. It drew no connections and sat in the corner of the window.
  • Settings. Editor settings took a relaunch to apply.
  • Quitting. Unsaved work is now written to disk before the app exits.

Known issues

  • Overlapping edits. Two devices editing the same paragraph produce conflict markers you resolve by hand. Sync is a three-way merge; it does not silently merge two cursors in one paragraph.
  • Per-document view modes. The setting stores a mode per document, but the global mode is what applies.
  • Settings at narrow widths. The tabs crowd in some languages at some window sizes.
  • Libraries from before 1.5. Writing every note out as a .md file is a one-time migration the app asks you to accept.

TestFlight

mrkdwn 1.3

iOS 1.3.0 (8) and macOS 1.3.0 (12)

Mostly an iPhone and iPad release. The Mac has had these features for a while; this is the version where iOS catches up with its editor menus and a library you can actually change.

New features

  • Editor menus on iOS. An aA menu for text size, focus mode, syntax colouring, style check, authors, statistics, find and replace and appearance; a title menu; and a Share menu with export, copy and print.
  • Configure Editor. An editor settings screen reachable while writing, including the per-part-of-speech and style-check rows that only the Mac had.
  • Folders on iOS. Create, rename, duplicate and trash folders, create a note inside one, and give each folder its own icon, colour and sort order.
  • File by swiping. Move a note to a folder with a swipe, or from its context menu with VoiceOver.
  • Folders at Top and Show Excerpts. Both settings now do something on both platforms. Before, they were stored and synced and read by nothing.

Improvements

  • One export list. The Mac builds its export list from the same source as iOS, so the two can no longer disagree.
  • Spanish. Rewritten: 391 strings translated, and it now covers as much of the app as every other language.

Bug fixes

  • Plain Text export. It passed the Markdown through unchanged. It now strips it, as documented.
  • Locked duplicates. Duplicating a locked note on the Mac produced an unlocked copy.
  • Text size. The setting was offered on both platforms and read by neither editor.
  • iPad with a keyboard. The formatting bar and iPadOS’s shortcuts bar drew on top of each other.
  • Two search fields. iPad showed one in the library and another in the notes list.

Known issues

  • New strings in English. The menus this release added are in English in every language until they are translated.