Finally a good looking Markdown editor for Android

Have you ever found yourself struggling to find a decent Markdown editor for your Android device? One that doesn’t make you squint at a cluttered interface, fumble through convoluted menus or that make you go “Yes it works but…it’s ugly”? If so, you’re not alone. As a writer and heavy note-taker, I’ve been on a quest for the perfect Markdown editor, one that was: functional, good looking, without premium features and not full of extra (to me) useless ones. I couldn’t find one so I put my Java knowledge to work and I created it! And I’m excited to share my creation with the world, so meet: PocketMark.

(yes I know, I can already hear you type that I should have used Kotlin and that Java is something of the past. But I decided that this project wasn't the one to make me dive into Kotlin...yet)

The Markdown Dilemma on Android

Most Markdown editors available at the moment are either too basic, lacking essential features, so overcomplicated that they defeated the purpose of Markdown’s simplicity or just plain ugly to look at even when they have all the features. The result? A frustrating writing experience that hampered my productivity. (I know i'm being a bit overdrammatic here maybe)

Enter PocketMark: A Breath of Fresh Air

PocketMark is a completely free Markdown editor Designed with the user in mind, it combines a sleek, minimalist interface with powerful features that cater to both beginners and Markdown veterans alike.

The home page

The improvements start already from the home page, instead of a long list of files you have to scroll and open one by one, in PocketMark all your files and notes are organized in a dynamic grid resembling the one Google Keep has, making searching and identifying the file you’re searching for much easier. For example here’s a comparison between a typical MarkDown editor (on the left) and PocketMark (on the right)

The editor

Another big goal of mine was making the editor activity as spacious as possible, since a lot of apps tend to have big toolbar always opened so with the goal of giving you as much pixels as possible here's my take: The dynamic toolbar maximizes your screen real estate, you can open and close it at your discretion (either with the icon on the top right or by sliding the finger). The animations are subtle enough to be nice but not distracting, and if you really don’t like them you can just turn them off in the settings.

For example in this tweet where I'm showcasing that tables are supported you can see the toolbar opening and closing (I suggest to see the video at full screen...thanks X compression)

And in this one you can see how switching between formatted text and editing looks with and without animations

The tagging system

The next big thing I needed was a simple tagging system to find even quicker notes that I might not remember the name, so I implemented in PocketMark a color tagging system: you can assign a color to your files and immediatly find them on the home page with the filters.

Here's an old tweet where I showcase this feature (this was a bit early in development so it looks a little different now but you get the idea)

the colors association are managed by a json file created in the app folder, here's an example on how it looks behind the scenes:

{
  "SchoolprojectToDolis.md": 0,
  "Storytelling.md": -1,
  "Bluenoteexample.md": 2,
  "Historynotes.md": -1,
  "Programmingnotes.md": 3,
  "MytriptoItaly.md": 1
}

nothing fancy...but it works!

PocketMark support the whole Markdown package. Need to insert an image or create a table? It’s just a tap away. Want to share your work? Choose from various formats, including exporting as an image.

The app’s work perfectly offline. Write, edit, and create wherever inspiration strikes you. And while it doesn’t offer sync functionality PocketMark’s files folder is freely accessible by the user or third party apps so you can use it with other services if you want.

With the new update I made you can also change PocketMark folder's path should you wish for it

Customization and Accessibility

While I’m personally a die-hard dark theme user I understands that every writer has unique preferences, PocketMark offer some custumization like the possibility to change the syntax highlight color and of course a light theme. Just don’t blame me if you end up like this:

here's an example of dark and light theme at work:

The app is also fully labeled and compatible with screen reading software, making it accessible to low vision users.

I can go on with features and (bad) jokes but I don’t want to reach the characters limit so I’ll leave you with this:

PocketMark was created by me alone between a full time job and university and while isn’t perfect I’m very proud of it and I hope you’ll like it as well.

Whether you’re a seasoned writer, a student, or someone who just loves to jot down ideas, PocketMark offers a optimal blend of simplicity, eye candy and functionality. All completely free.

You can find a full lists of feature here

And if I managed to convince you and you’re ready to transform your Markdown editing you can download PocketMark from the Play Store using this link!