Notenik is a free and open-source Mac app for taking and organizing notes using Markdown. It can be downloaded from the Mac App Store.

Notenik has a few distinguishing features in the increasingly crowded field of note-taking apps:

  • It is a native Mac app written entirely in Swift, and using AppKit
  • It has a very traditional Mac user interface
  • It is free and open-source
  • Notes are stored in plain text files
  • Notes can be stored in multiple collections (aka folders)
  • Collections/folders can be stored anywhere the user likes
  • Notenik supports multiple fields per note, and many different field types
  • The body of a note is always formatted using Markdown, but other fields (a teaser, for example) can also be formatted using Markdown
  • Notenik supports filtering, sorting, and merging of notes to create static websites
  • Support is provided for importing, exporting, and sharing notes using a wide variety of formats
  • Supports both MultiMarkdown metadata as well as YAML frontmatter

The Collection window shows two tabs on the left, and another two on the right. On the left, the user can switch between a sorted list of all notes in the collection, and an outline of all notes, organized by tags. On the right, the user can switch between an edit view and a display view.

All Notenik documentation is stored in the Notenik Knowledge Base, which is itself a Notenik Collection, and is always accessible from within Notenik (as well as from the web).

The Notenik Knowledge Base opened in Notenik

Notenik Markdown Support

Notenik provides support for the following Markdown elements.

Element Support Notes
Headings Yes
Paragraphs Yes
Line Breaks Yes
Bold Yes
Italic Yes
Blockquotes Yes
Ordered Lists Yes
Unordered Lists Yes
Code Yes
Horizontal Rules Yes
Links Yes
Images Yes
Tables Yes
Fenced Code Blocks Yes
Syntax Highlighting No
Footnotes Yes
Heading IDs No
Definition Lists Yes
Strikethrough No
Task Lists Yes
Emoji (copy and paste) No
Emoji (shortcodes) No
Highlight No
Subscript No
Superscript No
Automatic URL Linking No
Disabling Automatic URL Linking No
HTML Yes