zenmarked

A snappy offline-first markdown editor featuring:

• live preview via marked.js
• images support: add with drag-and-drop or paste from clipboard
• syntax highlighting via CodeMirror
• user-friendly shortcuts

It runs as a local web server, you access it in your browser.

ZenMarked being used to update its own README

Installation

You can install with:

pip install zenmarked

If you use uv, you can install it with:

uv tool install zenmarked

Or skip installation and just use it through uvx like so: uvx zenmarked

Usage

zenmarked [FILE.md] [options]

Examples

# Open CWD — sidebar shows all .md files, create/edit freely
zenmarked

# Open a specific file
zenmarked notes.md

# Light theme, custom port
zenmarked journal.md --theme light --port 8080

# Open in preview-only mode (editor hidden)
zenmarked draft.md --mode preview

# Custom image directory, no autosave
zenmarked docs/readme.md --image-dir docs/assets/imgs --no-autosave

Screenshots

Dark mode

Features

• 3-column layout: sidebar (file list + image gallery) + editor + live preview
• View modes: split (editor + preview), edit (editor only), or preview (preview only) — toggle via the segmented control in the sidebar or cycle with Ctrl+\
• Markdown syntax highlight via CodeMirror
• Live preview via marked.js, updates as you type
• Auto-save enabled by default, Ctrl+S to save manually at any time
• Image support: drag-and-drop, click drop zone, or paste from clipboard
• Image insertion modal: alt text, caption, alignment, custom width
• Click image in preview to edit its properties
• Rename image right-click image in the gallery to rename it
  • references are updated automatically across all .md files in the working dir
• Smart URL paste: select text in editor, paste a URL → auto-creates a markdown link
• Light / Dark themes

Image paths

Images are stored in ./images/ (relative to the working directory) by default, and inserted into markdown as ./images/filename.png.

The image target directory can be overriden through option --image-dir PATH

Keyboard shortcuts