nvALT lives

A markdown editor that has been around for donkey’s years – 2012 to be precise – and which many cut their markdown teeth on, nvALT has finally updated to Silicon with the release of v3.0 (v3.0.5).

The last update, v2.2.8, arrived in 2017. Version 3.0, on the other hand, requires macOS 12 or later. It is a universal app.

Brett Terpstra, nvALT’s developer, said: “If you’ve been a long-time nvALT user, this update is for you. I’m not trying to add a bunch of new users at this point, but I’m also not trying to avoid it, so do what you will. If you’ve been using it, though, and I inadvertently broke a feature you’d come to rely on, please let me know.”

Among improvements made to nvALT are that it now runs natively on Apple Silicon as well as the previous Intel models. Web links are found by the system link detector and double-bracket wiki links still work.

New features are:

• Open Marked streaming preview: sends the current note to Marked and opens x-marked://stream/. It is in the Preview menu and the status menu.
• Highlight markdown syntax in the editor while markdown completion is on.
• Ask once, on launch, whether to convert a rich text library to markdown.
• Add ‘Convert to markdown’ in Notes settings. Rich text notes are converted, plain text notes are copied as they are, and the files are written into a new folder that then becomes the notes folder. The current folder is left unchanged.

One shortcut not mentioned in the download package is preview, achieved by typing Control→. See the Preview menu item for more.

Terpstra’s new app, nvUltra, which has spent years in beta, is still “shooting for [a] 2026” release.

Website: nvALT