Getting Started

Getting Started

What kind of editor this is

You type into a formatted document, not into Markdown source. A heading is drawn as a heading, bold text is bold, a table is a real table. The file saved to disk is still plain Markdown — the formatting you see is the Markdown, shown as what it means.

Two consequences worth knowing up front:

• You never type # or ** to format. Use the command bar buttons or the keyboard shortcuts. (If you want to see and edit the raw syntax, open the source panel.)
• The file is watched. If something else changes it while it is open — a colleague, a script, an AI assistant — the editor notices. See Live Updates and Conflicts.

The window

Part	What it is
Command bar	The strip of icons along the top. Every action lives here. Hover any icon for its name, what it does, and its shortcut.
Tabs	One per open document, below the command bar. Pinned documents get their own row above the rest.
Editor pane	The document itself, on a page-shaped sheet.
Gutter	The margin to the left of the text: line numbers, and a chevron beside each heading for folding.
Status bar	Along the bottom: the file's path, word and character counts, reading time, the cursor's line and column, and which section you are in.

Panels — the folder browser, the outline, the raw source, the diagram preview — are hidden until you turn them on from the view controls at the right of the command bar.

Your first document

1. The editor opens with one empty tab. Just start typing.
2. Press Ctrl+1 to make the current line a top-level heading, then Enter and carry on — the next line is a normal paragraph again.
3. Press Ctrl+S to save. You are asked where to put it the first time.

To open an existing file, press Ctrl+O, or drop to the Open recent menu (the clock icon) for something you had open before. Ctrl+N starts a new document in a new tab.

Opening .md files from Windows

Double-click a .md file in Explorer, or use Open with, and it opens here. If the editor is already running the file joins that window as a new tab rather than starting a second copy — and if the file is already open, its existing tab is simply brought to the front.

Recently used files are also on the editor's Windows taskbar jump list: right-click the taskbar icon to reopen one.

Picking up where you left off

When you close the editor it remembers your open tabs, which of them were pinned, your open folder, and how your panels were arranged. All of it comes back next time you launch. Unsaved documents are not remembered — there is no file to remember them against, so save anything you want to keep.

Light and dark

The moon / sun icon at the far right of the command bar switches themes. Everything follows it, including rendered diagrams.

Next

• Writing and Formatting
• Keyboard Shortcuts