Editor

The editor is where you write Markdown. It's built on CodeMirror 6, the editor component used in many developer tools. Shortcuts are shown for Windows and Linux; on macOS use Cmd instead of Ctrl and Option instead of Alt (see Keyboard shortcuts).

Layout

By default the window shows the sidebar (Explorer and Outline), the tabs, the editor and the preview side by side. Change it from the View menu or the buttons at the top right.

On macOS the menus (File, Edit, Format and the rest) are in the system menu bar at the top of the screen, next to the Markpion menu with About, Hide and Quit, and a Window menu. Keyboard shortcuts work the same, but the menus don't list them; see Help → Keyboard Shortcuts. Recent files are in the Explorer and on the welcome screen. On Windows and Linux the menus are in the window.

The view modes:

View	Shortcut
Editor only	Ctrl+1
Split (editor and preview)	Ctrl+2
Preview only	Ctrl+3
Cycle through the views	Ctrl+\
Show or hide the file explorer	Ctrl+Shift+E
Show or hide the outline	Ctrl+Shift+L

Drag the dividers between panels to resize them. The sizes are remembered.

• F6 moves the keyboard focus to the next pane (sidebar, editor, preview) and Shift+F6 to the previous one, so you can reach the Explorer, the text and the preview without the mouse.
• Focus Mode (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) hides everything except the editor and preview. Press Esc or the same shortcut to leave.
• Line length (Settings → Editor): on a wide screen, long lines are hard to follow. Choose about 72, 80, 100 or 120 characters and the text (with its line numbers) stays that wide, centered in the editor; with Wrap long lines on, lines wrap there. A narrow editor, as in split view, still uses its full width.
• Typewriter scrolling (View → Editor → Typewriter Scrolling, or in Settings → Editor) keeps the line you're typing in the middle of the editor, so your eyes stay in one place. It pairs well with Focus Mode.
• Close brackets and backticks automatically (Settings → Editor, off by default): typing (, [, { or ` adds the closing one after the cursor, and typing the closing one steps over it. Quotes aren't paired, because apostrophes are common in text.
• Dim other paragraphs (View → Editor → Dim Other Paragraphs, or in Settings → Editor) fades every paragraph except the one the cursor is in, so the sentence you're writing stands out. A paragraph here is a run of lines without a blank line between them.
• Full Screen (F11) fills the screen.

Syntax highlighting

Markdown syntax is highlighted as you type: headings, emphasis, links, lists, quotes and code. Fenced code blocks are highlighted in their own language, for example ```python, ```ts or ```bash.

Line numbers, wrapping and folding

• Line numbers are shown in the gutter. Turn them off with View → Editor → Line Numbers or in Settings.
• Long lines wrap by default; View → Editor → Word Wrap (Alt+Z) or the Wrap long lines setting switches to horizontal scrolling.
• Click the arrow next to a heading, list or code block in the gutter to fold it. Ctrl+Shift+[ folds and Ctrl+Shift+] unfolds at the cursor (on macOS, Cmd+Option+[ and Cmd+Option+]).
• View → Fold → Fold All collapses every section to its heading, for an overview of a long document, and Unfold All opens them again. In the editor, Ctrl+Alt+[ and Ctrl+Alt+] do the same. View → Fold → Fold to Level 1, 2 or 3 folds every section at that heading level and deeper, so the document reads like its table of contents down to that level (for example, Level 2 leaves the # and ## headings showing, with each ## section closed).

Moving around

• Go to Line (Ctrl+G) jumps to a line number.
• The Outline in the sidebar lists the document's headings; click one to jump to it. Click the arrow before a heading that has subheadings, or press Left / Right on it, to hide or show them. Right-click a heading to Rename Heading… (links to it follow, see Rename a heading), Copy Link to Heading (#anchor) or Copy Markdown Link ([Heading](#anchor)), using the same anchors as the preview and GitHub. Drag a heading in the outline, or focus it and press Alt+↑ / Alt+↓, to move its whole section (see Move a section).
• The status bar shows the line and column (Ln, Col); click it to go to a line.
• The usual keys work: arrows, Home/End, Ctrl+Home/Ctrl+End, Page Up/Page Down, and Ctrl+←/→ by word.

Selection and multiple cursors

• Ctrl+A selects everything. Double-click selects a word, and triple-click selects a line.
• Ctrl+D selects the next occurrence of the current word or selection, adding a cursor there.
• Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on macOS) adds another cursor.
• Alt+drag selects a rectangular block, which is useful for editing table columns.
• Matching text elsewhere in the document is highlighted when you select a word.
• With text selected, typing *, _, `, ~, ", ( or [ wraps the selection instead of replacing it, and keeps it selected: select a word and type ** to make it bold.

Editing lines

Action	Shortcut
Move line up / down	Alt+↑ / Alt+↓
Copy line up / down	Shift+Alt+↑ / Shift+Alt+↓
Delete line	Ctrl+Shift+K
Indent / outdent	Tab / Shift+Tab, or Ctrl+] / Ctrl+[

The Edit menu (and the command palette) also has the following. Longer menus group related commands in submenus (Go To, Git Changes, Lines, Change Case): point at one, or press →, to open it.

• Sort Lines (A to Z) and (Z to A): numbers sort naturally, so 2 comes before 10.
• Remove Duplicate Lines: keeps the first of each repeated line; blank lines stay.
• Join Lines: joins the selected lines, or the current line and the next one, with single spaces.
• Reflow Paragraph (Alt+Q): re-breaks the paragraph at the cursor, or every paragraph the selection touches, so no line is longer than the Line length setting (80 characters when it's off). List items keep their marker with the following lines indented under the text, quotes keep their > on every line, and hard line breaks (two trailing spaces or a backslash) stay. Code blocks, math, HTML, tables, headings, link definitions and front matter are left alone, and a line never starts with a word that would turn it into a list item, heading or quote.
• Unwrap Paragraph: the reverse, joining each paragraph into a single line.
• Transform to Uppercase, Lowercase and Title Case: for each selection, or the word at the cursor.

Sorting and removing duplicates work on the selected lines, or on the whole document when nothing is selected. Each is one edit that Ctrl+Z undoes.

When you press Enter inside a list or quote, the next line continues it.

Undo and redo

Ctrl+Z undoes and Ctrl+Y redoes (Cmd+Shift+Z on macOS). Each tab keeps its own undo history while it's open, so switching tabs doesn't lose it. Formatting commands, table sorting and task toggles can all be undone.

Copy, cut and paste

Copy, cut and paste use the system clipboard. Markpion adds some smart behaviour:

• Rich text: content copied from a web page or Word is converted to Markdown (headings, lists, links, tables). On Windows, Ctrl+Shift+V pastes plain text instead; on any system you can turn the conversion off in Settings.
• Spreadsheet cells: cells copied from Excel or Google Sheets are pasted as a Markdown table.
• Links: pasting a URL while text is selected turns the selection into [text](url).
• Images: pasting an image saves it to an assets/ folder next to the document and inserts a link (see Images).

Formatting

The Format menu has commands for bold, italic, links, headings, lists and more; the Table menu has everything for tables. They're described in Writing tools.

Breadcrumbs

The bar under the toolbar shows where the cursor is in the document's headings, for example notes.md › Guide › Install › Windows. Click a part to list the headings at that level (under the same parent heading, the current one marked with •) and pick one to jump to it; the file name lists the top-level headings. Turn the bar off with View → Breadcrumbs. It's hidden in Focus Mode.

Formatting toolbar

The toolbar above the editor puts the common commands one click away, like a word processor:

Group	Buttons
History	Undo, Redo, and the paragraph style list (Normal text, Heading 1–6)
Text	Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, Inline code
Paragraphs	Bulleted list, Numbered list, Task list, Quote
Insert	Link, Image, Table (choose the size: hover over the grid and click, or type the columns and rows, header row included), Code block, Horizontal rule, Footnote, Table of contents. With the cursor in a table (even one with mistakes) or several lines selected, the Table button becomes Table tools: Fix Table, insert or delete rows and columns, align or move columns, format, sort, or copy the table as CSV
AI	A menu of the AI assistant's actions (only when the assistant is turned on)

• Buttons light up for the formatting at the cursor: Bold inside **bold**, Bulleted list in a bulleted list, and so on. The paragraph style list shows the current heading level.
• Clicking a button keeps your selection and the cursor in the editor. Hover over a button to see its keyboard shortcut.
• The toolbar always stays on one row. When the editor is too narrow for every button (for example in split view on a smaller screen), the buttons that don't fit move, in order, into the More (⋯) menu at the right end.
• From the keyboard, Tab into the toolbar and use ← / →, Home and End to move between its controls.
• Hide or show it with View → Formatting Toolbar. It's hidden in Focus Mode.

Spelling and statistics

• Spelling is checked with your operating system's dictionary, and misspelled words are underlined. Turn it off in Settings.
• The status bar shows the word count. Click it to see words, characters, lines, sentences, paragraphs, reading time (230 words a minute) and speaking time (130 words a minute) for the document, and for the selection if there is one. Readability is the Flesch reading ease score, from 0 (hard) to 100 (easy), with a word for its band ("plain English" is 60–69). It is an estimate for English prose of 30 words or more: syllables are guessed from the spelling, Markdown symbols count as text, and other languages show "—".
• Set Word Count Goal… (command palette) gives a saved document a target, and the status bar then shows your progress, such as 523 / 1,000 words. Enter 0 to remove the goal. Goals are kept in your settings, per file, and follow the file when you rename or move it in Markpion.
• In a document with task lists, the status bar also shows how many tasks are done (2/5 tasks). Click it to go to the next open task. In a narrow window, the line ending, encoding and "Markdown" labels are hidden to make room.

Saving

Save with Ctrl+S, Save As with Ctrl+Shift+S, and Save All with Ctrl+Alt+S. Auto save, recovery and file history are covered in Saving, history & recovery.