Free/On your device/iPhone & Mac · iPad next
Markdown, beautifully.
Fast, free Markdown notes stored on-device.Secure. Simple. Stoic.
- No account
- Editor stays free
- No telemetry
Markdown shorthand, resolved as you type
[01]Key features
Think differently, and beautifully.
Plain Markdown on your own disk, nothing to sign in to, and the whole dialect when you want it — five things worth knowing first, each argued in detail further down.
Your notes are a folder
Plain Markdown on your own disk — open it anywhere, back it up, walk away with it.
Nothing to sign in to
No account and no telemetry. Open it and write — even when the network is gone.
Sealed on the device
Encrypted where you write it, and entirely at work with the network off.
Two devices, one page
Send a link and write together, peer to peer, with no server in the middle.
The whole dialect
Tables, formulas, footnotes — and out again as PDF, HTML, or a zip.
[02]Formatting
Rich text that is still plain text.
Bold, italic, code, headings, tables, formulas, diagrams — every kind of thing a note can hold. Press the key you already know or type the mark itself; it resolves the moment it closes, and the file underneath stays Markdown you could read in a terminal.
Select a word and press the key you already know
**bold**bold⌘B*italic*italic⌘I++underlined++underlined⌘U~~struck~~struck⌘⇧X`code`code⌘E==marked==markedtyped[a link](url)a link⌘KH~2~O · x^2^H2O · x2typed
The shortcuts are the ones your hands already have — ⌘B, ⌘I, ⌘K — and every mark can also be typed. Headings answer to ⌘⌥1 through 6; lists to ⌘⇧7, 8 and 9.
Eight kinds of block, one file format
- ##
Six heading levels
One to six hashes, or ⌘⌥1–6, with sizes derived from the body so the page keeps one rhythm.
- -
Lists that nest
Bulleted, numbered and task lists. Tab indents, Shift-Tab outdents, and a checkbox ticks with one undo behind it.
- >
Quotes
One character at the head of a line and the paragraph steps aside as a pulled quote, the rule beside it drawn rather than typed.
- ```ts
Code in 26 languages
TypeScript to Rust, SQL to YAML — fenced, labelled and highlighted. An unknown language keeps its label.
- | a | b |
Tables you can move
Align cells, add or drop rows and columns, shift a column sideways, set its width — without touching a pipe.
- $$
Formulas, typeset
Inline $…$ and display $$…$$ rendered by KaTeX as you type. A stray brace never blanks the page.
- ```mermaid
Diagrams from text
A fence marked mermaid renders as the flowchart or sequence it describes, and stays text in the file.
- /image
Images, filed beside the note
Drop a picture in; it is stored next to your Markdown and referenced by name, so it travels with the file.
[04]Type delightfully
The keyboard already knows what you meant.
Two years inside coding tools taught the hands a few habits. This editor keeps them: a key that opens everything, a key that finds any emoji, and characters that quietly become the right ones.
Friday
Sixteen of the thirty-six replacements
- ->→→
- <-→←
- =>→⇒
- --→—
- ...→…
- !=→≠
- >=→≥
- <=→≤
- +/-→±
- (c)→©
- (tm)→™
- <3→❤️
- :)→🙂
- ;)→😉
- :D→😃
- </3→💔
[05]iCloud sync · iPhone, Mac & iPad
Written on the Mac, already on the phone.
One library on iPhone and Mac, with iPad next. Beauty Maximus keeps the whole of it current through your own iCloud Drive — notes, images, version history and page settings — with no Beauty account and no Beauty server between them.
iCloud Drive
Up to date
Tuesday
Thin rain all morning; the far bridge in fog.
Post the letter
Tuesday
Thin rain all morning; the far bridge in fog.
Post the letter
Tuesday
Thin rain all morning; the far bridge in fog.
Post the letter
Type on the Mac
The optional subscription
Beauty Maximus
Your library, current on iPhone and Mac. The editor and your local files stay free, and sync is the whole of what the subscription does today.
- iPhoneAt launch
- MacAt launch
- iPadNext
Your iCloud, not ours
The library is stored in your own iCloud Drive. There is no Beauty account and no Beauty server — Apple's, and yours.
Everything the library holds
Notes, folders, images, version history and your page preferences travel together. Day or night stays a choice each device makes.
A conflict keeps both
Edit the same note on two devices and the newer version wins the page; the other is kept in version history, marked as the other device's.
[06]Type & rhythm
Set the page the way you read.
One sheet shapes every note: the face the words are set in, how dense the page is, whether it sits on a desk or fills the window, and day or night. Nothing to theme, nothing to configure by hand — four decisions, each one made by looking.
Type & rhythm
Shape the page
Literata — A reading serif with optical text and display cuts.
Four faces, each with true italics and true bold. Four rhythms that differ in density, not in measure — every one holds the line between 56 and 65 characters, where reading is easiest. Pick one, or let it show you.
On craft
Some things are made to be used. A few are made to be loved, and the difference is rarely in the materials.
It is in the small decisions — the weight of a line, the room a paragraph is given, the face the words are set in — made once, so nobody has to make them again.
We are what we repeatedly do.
- 01
Preferences travel with the library
Typeface, rhythm and surface are part of what iCloud keeps current. Day or night is left to each device, because a phone at night is not a Mac at noon.
- 02
The toolbar can step aside
Collapse the formatting bar and the page is only the page. Every command is still a keystroke or a slash away.
- 03
The library, sorted your way
Filter to local or shared notes, group by folder or by when you last touched them, sort by name or by date.
[07]Local & portable
A folder you can open, copy, and walk away with.
No database to trust, no export to remember. Each note is a Markdown file, images sit beside it, and the whole thing is readable with or without this app installed.
- Beauty
- notes
- on-craft.md
- reading-list.md
- kitchen-table.md
- assets
- study-of-hands.png
- Library.md
Point your own backup, sync folder, or version control at it. Beauty is a way of editing these files, not a place they are locked inside.
# On craft Some things are made to be used.A few are made to be *loved*. > We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence → a habit ❤️
On the way out
- Markdown
- HTML
- Whole library as .zip
Images are inlined on the way out, so an exported note is complete wherever it lands.
[08]Performance
Fast, light, and hard to break.
Every keystroke reaches the page first and your disk after. Everything here follows from that one decision.
Sub-millisecond rendering
The character is on the page before anything parses it. Markdown catches up 60 ms later, your file 350 ms after your hands stop.
A long file is still a file
Past 50,000 characters it commits less often, past 100,000 less often still. Typing is never what slows down.
Instant cold start
No splash screen, no update checks, no network calls. The editor opens ready to type before your finger lifts.
Tabs, and the session behind them
One tab per note, the last ten you closed a keystroke away, and a desktop that reopens the set you left.
Written twice before it counts
A save stages a copy, reads it back, keeps the last good file, then swaps it in — with two hundred versions behind it.
[09]Attention to detail
A thousand decisions you should never notice.
Nothing here is a headline feature. Together they are the difference between an editor you tolerate and one you reach for.
- 01
Backspace does what you meant
At the head of a list item it joins the line above instead of orphaning it. Small mercy, felt daily.
- 02
Tab is for structure
Indent and outdent list items anywhere. Inside a table, the same key walks you cell to cell.
- 03
Paste arrives clean
Rich text becomes proper Markdown, code stays code, and a link dropped on a selection wraps it.
- 04
Checkboxes are undoable
Tick a task by accident and one undo puts it back — the same as any other edit.
- 05
Formulas that typeset
Inline $a^2 + b^2$ and display blocks render as you type, and a stray brace never blanks the page.
- 06
Tables you can move
Add or drop rows and columns, shift a column sideways, set alignment — without touching a pipe character.
- 07
Images become part of the note
Drop a picture in and it is filed beside your Markdown, referenced by name, ready to travel with it.
- 08
History, kept quietly
Versions are collected in the background and named ones stay put. Preview, then restore.
- 09
Leaves in one piece
Export a note as Markdown, HTML, or PDF — or take the entire library as a zip, images included.
Not anti-AI. Pro-human.
Machines are welcome everywhere else in the day. This is the room where you think — where a sentence gets moved four times because the fourth position is the right one, and nothing offers to finish it for you.
Beauty was built without a deadline, an investor, or a growth target: a project made to be fussed over. If it ever learns to help, it will ask first, and it will still be your folder, your files, your call.
The editor stays free
[10]Use anywhere
Free, and yours from the first keystroke.
Launching together on iPhone and Mac, with iPad next. The browser version stays available, with no account or sign-up required.
Beauty
Markdown editor · Free · 1.0.0
- At launch
iPhone
Launching alongside Mac, with the same library kept current through iCloud.
- At launchDownload
Mac
On the Mac App Store. Apple silicon and Intel, with your notes in ~/Beauty.
- Next
iPad
The next platform after the iPhone and Mac launch, with the same iCloud library.
- AvailableOpen
Browser
Any modern browser. Notes are held in encrypted storage on that device.
[11]Frequent questions
The things people actually ask.
Yes. The editor and local files stay free, with no account required. Beauty Maximus is an optional subscription for keeping a library current across Apple devices.