atiea FAQ: markdown notes on Mac

atiea is a native Mac app for markdown notes. It highlights markdown as you write, supports wiki links and backlinks, picks up #tags, and stores your notes locally.

Yes. You write notes in markdown with live syntax highlighting, and you can export to Markdown, HTML, PDF and DOCX.

On your Mac. atiea needs no account, and your notes are never sent to us.

No. You can open the app and start writing.

atiea is built for macOS 15 or later.

Not yet. An iPhone and iPad app with iCloud sync is coming soon.

atiea is a calm, native, local-first notebook with sensible defaults. Obsidian is more customizable and Notion is a team workspace. See our comparison pages for details.

It depends on what you write. For notes you want to link and keep, atiea is a native Mac markdown notes app. Other well-known Mac markdown tools include Typora, MacDown and MarkText; check each project’s site for current details.

Yes. atiea supports [[wiki links]] with automatic backlinks, plus #tags and live markdown highlighting.

Yes. atiea exports notes to Markdown, HTML, PDF and DOCX.

Yes. Notes are stored locally on your Mac and need no connection or account.

No. Obsidian’s app is proprietary, although your notes are stored as plain markdown files you own. If open source matters to you, Logseq and Joplin are open-source options; see our full list of Obsidian alternatives.

Popular choices include atiea, Logseq, Joplin, Bear and Notion, each with a different emphasis. We compare them in our guide to Obsidian alternatives.

If you want less setup and a calmer interface, atiea is a native Mac alternative with wiki links, backlinks and tags. If you want maximum customization, Obsidian remains a strong choice.

Yes. Notes are written in markdown with live highlighting, and you can export to Markdown, HTML, PDF or DOCX.

For personal note-taking, yes. atiea does not try to replace Notion’s databases or team features.

Yes. Notes are stored locally and the app works without a connection.

Not natively. See our guide: Does Apple Notes support markdown?

If you want markdown, linking and plain-text portability, atiea is a native option.

Both are calm, design-focused notes apps with tags and markdown-style writing. atiea is local-first and Mac-native.

It is personal. Try both with a few real notes and see which feels better to write in.

It depends on your needs. atiea is a calm native option, Obsidian is the most customizable, Bear is polished and Apple-only, Apple Notes is built in, and Notion suits teams.

macOS does not include a dedicated markdown editor. TextEdit can edit plain text, and Apple Notes is not markdown-based.

Apps that store notes locally and do not require an account give you the most control. atiea stores notes on your Mac and needs no account.

Choose Obsidian if you want plugins and cross-platform use. Choose atiea if you want a focused native Mac app with wiki links, backlinks and tags that works without setup.

Usually yes, because markdown is plain text. Check that your app stores notes as files or offers standard exports; atiea exports to Markdown, HTML, PDF and DOCX.

For quick lists and everyday notes, often yes. If you want to write in markdown or keep notes as portable plain text, a markdown-first app is a better fit.

Not as a typing language. Apple Notes uses formatting buttons and its own storage, so syntax like **bold** or # Heading is not converted as you type.

atiea is a native Mac notes app that uses markdown with live syntax highlighting, wiki links, inline tags, and export to Markdown, HTML, PDF, and DOCX. Obsidian and Bear are other options with different tradeoffs.

Recent versions of Apple’s apps added some markdown-related export options, but behavior varies by version, so check Apple’s documentation for your macOS release. Exporting a copy is not the same as writing and storing notes in markdown.

No. Apple Notes stores notes in its own internal rich-text format and syncs them through iCloud, so you cannot open them as .md files in another editor.

Only if you reuse your writing outside the app, want notes to link together, or prefer typing formatting as syntax. For quick lists, scans, and shared notes, Apple Notes remains a good fit, and many people use both.

Not yet. atiea is a native Mac app for macOS 15 or later today, and an iPhone and iPad app with iCloud sync is coming soon. If you need your notes on a phone right now, weigh that before switching.

A wiki link is a link to another note written with double square brackets around the note’s title, such as [[Note title]]. It points at a note by name rather than by file path or URL.

A backlink is an automatic link back to a note from every other note that links to it. You do not create it by hand; the app builds the list from the links you wrote.

A tag like #design groups notes under a broad topic, while a wiki link points at one specific note and usually carries a sentence of context. Use tags to filter and links to connect particular ideas.

No. Short-lived notes like lists and scratchpads do not need links. They pay off for ideas you will build on later, such as research, writing and long-running projects.

Yes. atiea supports [[wiki links]] and shows backlinks, in a native macOS markdown editor that stores notes locally on your Mac.

Yes. The Zettelkasten method relies on small single-idea notes connected by links, and wiki links with backlinks are a natural way to do that in markdown.

A note-taking method based on small, single-idea notes that are linked to each other. The name is German for “slip box”, and the method is associated with the sociologist Niklas Luhmann.

Yes. Any markdown notes app with wiki links and backlinks works well, because the method only needs small notes, links between them and a way to find them again.

Fleeting notes are quick captures, literature notes record ideas from sources in your own words, and permanent notes hold one well-formed idea that makes sense on its own. Permanent notes are the ones you link most.

No. You need quick capture, wiki links, backlinks and tags. A markdown notes app such as atiea provides those, and the notes remain plain markdown you can export.

Start with a few broad tags, such as #inbox and one or two topic tags, and let links carry the specific connections. Elaborate tag systems tend to become maintenance work.

No. It suits ideas you want to build on, like research and writing. Lists, one-off meeting notes and quick reference material do not need to be linked.

Write plain text and add a few symbols: # for headings, - for lists, **bold**, - [ ] for tasks, and [[double brackets]] to link notes. A markdown app styles the symbols as you type.

Headings, bold, italic, bullet and numbered lists, task lists, links and blockquotes cover nearly all note-taking. Tags and wiki links are extras supported by notes apps.

Not usually. Tags group notes by topic and wiki links connect related notes, and search finds the rest. Folders are optional.

Start with one # title, put tasks near the top, add context below, and end with a couple of #tags. Consistent structure makes notes quick to scan.

In atiea, Cmd+B makes text bold, Cmd+I italic and Cmd+K inserts a link. Cmd+N creates a new note.

Plain-text notes are as private as where you store them. atiea stores notes locally on your Mac, with no account required.

An app that keeps your data on your device by default and works offline, with syncing as an optional extra rather than a requirement.

Yes. atiea stores notes locally on your Mac and needs no account.

No. Local storage reduces how many systems hold your notes, but you still need disk encryption such as FileVault, backups, and care with any sync or sharing you enable.

Local-first apps treat the copy on your device as the main one and work offline; cloud-first apps keep the main copy on the vendor’s servers and usually require an account. Cloud-first tends to be stronger for collaboration.

Usually, if it stores or exports open formats. Check that the app can export everything to formats such as Markdown, HTML, or PDF before you commit; atiea exports to Markdown, HTML, PDF, and DOCX.

It is safer to keep passwords and recovery codes in a dedicated password manager. A notes app, local or cloud, is designed for writing, not for storing secrets.

Logseq and Joplin are well-known open-source options. Logseq is an outliner that stores local files, and Joplin is a markdown notes app with several sync options.

atiea is a native macOS app with markdown, wiki links, backlinks and tags, stored locally on your Mac. It requires macOS 15 or later and does not use plugins.

Usually yes, because an Obsidian vault is a folder of plain markdown files. Copy the vault, test a small batch, and check how your new app handles wiki links, attachments and plugin-specific syntax.

Apple Notes needs none because it is built into your Mac, and atiea is designed to work immediately without plugins. Apple Notes is not markdown-based, while atiea is.

Only partly. Notion is a cloud workspace for collaboration and databases, while Obsidian is a local markdown notebook, so they suit different needs.

Neither is better in general. Obsidian suits personal, local, linked markdown notes; Notion suits collaboration and databases.

Offline behavior depends on the feature and your setup, so check Notion’s current documentation.

Yes. Obsidian keeps notes as plain markdown files in a folder called a vault, so you can open them in other editors.

Yes. Notion is a cloud workspace and you sign in with an account to use it.

atiea is a native macOS app with markdown, wiki links, backlinks and tags. It stores notes locally and needs no account, but it has no collaboration features.

Yes. Many people use Notion for shared team work and a local markdown notebook for private notes. Keeping personal notes in plain markdown makes them easy to move later.

Wrap text in two asterisks for bold (**bold**) and one asterisk for italic (*italic*). Three asterisks on each side give bold and italic together.

Use pipes to separate columns and a row of dashes under the header, for example | Name | Role | followed by | --- | --- |. Then add one row per line.

Start the line with one to six # characters followed by a space. One # is the top-level heading, two is the next level, and so on.

Put a backslash before it, for example \* or \#. The backslash tells the renderer to display the character instead of treating it as formatting.

They come from the GitHub Flavored Markdown extension rather than the original markdown. Most modern editors support them, but a very basic renderer may show them as plain text.

Yes. Cmd+B makes text bold, Cmd+I italic, Cmd+K inserts a link, Cmd+N creates a new note and Cmd+F opens find.

A plain-text file written in markdown, normally with the .md extension. It uses simple characters like # and - to mark headings and lists.

Right-click it, choose Open With, and select TextEdit or a markdown app. It is plain text, so any text editor works.

In structure, yes. Both are plain text; the .md ending tells apps the content uses markdown conventions.

Word may open it as plain text, but it will not render the formatting. Convert it to DOCX first, for example by exporting from a markdown app or with Pandoc.

Yes. Both extensions mean a markdown file; .md is simply shorter and far more common.

Those symbols are markdown syntax. A markdown app such as atiea shows them styled, with headings, lists and checkboxes rendered.

Write the header row with pipes between columns, add a separator row of dashes underneath, then add one line per body row. Leave a blank line above the table so it renders.

Add colons to the separator row: :--- aligns left, :---: centers and ---: aligns right. Right alignment suits numbers.

Escape it with a backslash, written as \|. An unescaped pipe is read as a column boundary and shifts the cells.

Not in plain markdown. Each row is a single line, and merged cells, lists and multi-paragraph cells are not supported. Some renderers accept an inline br tag for a line break, but it varies.

The usual causes are a missing separator row, no blank line above the table, or different column counts between rows. Fix those first, then check for unescaped pipes.

Tables come from the GitHub Flavored Markdown extension rather than the original markdown. Most modern editors and converters support them, but a minimal renderer may not.

Export from a markdown app that supports PDF, such as atiea, or open a rendered preview and use Print, then Save as PDF. Pandoc can also make PDFs but needs a PDF engine installed.

Export to DOCX from an app that supports it, such as atiea, or use Pandoc with the command pandoc note.md -o note.docx.

Yes. Pandoc relies on a PDF engine, by default LaTeX, so you need a LaTeX distribution or another engine selected with --pdf-engine.

Use Pandoc in a shell loop, for example: for f in *.md; do pandoc "$f" -o "${f%.md}.docx"; done.

With Pandoc, yes: pass a styled Word file using --reference-doc. Exporting from an app is faster but gives you less control over styling.

Image paths are resolved relative to where you run the converter, and [[wiki links]] are a notes-app convention that general converters may not understand. Fix the paths and swap wiki links for normal links first.

Start each line with - [ ] for an open task or - [x] for a completed one, with a space after the dash and a space inside the empty brackets.

Not in standard markdown. Use a calendar or reminders app for deadlines and keep the note for context.

Indent the child task under its parent by two to four spaces, using the same indentation throughout the note. Mixed spaces and tabs often break nesting.

The usual causes are a missing space after the dash, no space inside the brackets, or an editor that does not support task lists. Task lists are a GitHub Flavored Markdown extension, so very basic renderers may ignore them.

It depends on the app. Some editors let you click a rendered checkbox, while in others you tick a task by changing the space inside the brackets to an x.

Capture tasks inline as you write, tag notes that contain open work, and review them weekly. Link related notes with wiki links so each task points to its details.

Check seven things: how notes are stored, how markdown is displayed, linking between notes, organization (tags, pins, folders), export formats, speed and native feel, and privacy. Weight each by how you actually write.

Yes. atiea is a native Mac markdown notes app (macOS 15 or later) with live syntax highlighting, wiki links, inline tags, and export to Markdown, HTML, PDF, and DOCX.

Export one real note that contains a table, an image, and a code block to each format you care about, then open the results. Do this on day one so you know your exit works.

Tags are more flexible because one note can carry several, while a note usually lives in only one folder. Inline tags like #idea are fast to type and work well alongside wiki links.

It can. Native Mac apps tend to open quickly and follow macOS shortcuts and conventions, but a well-built cross-platform app may suit you better if you also work on Windows, Linux, or a phone.

If you need mobile apps, a plugin ecosystem, team collaboration, or support for platforms other than macOS, other tools such as Obsidian or Notion may fit better.