Typora is a simple and configurable document editor that provides excellent Markdown support. This application is ideal for students and professionals who need to write essays and reports. It might be difficult using Typora for multi-file projects or for website publishing.

Typora stands out by offering a variety of settings without sacrificing the simplicity of a barebones interface. Newcomers to Markdown may appreciate the keyboard shortcuts for formatting options as well as the intuitive live editor that hides the Markdown formatting syntax after you type it.

See the Typora Markdown reference for the official documentation. The Typora documentation indicates that the application generally uses GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM).

Typora editor interface

Typora Markdown Support

Typora provides support for the following Markdown elements.

Element Support Notes
Headings Yes
Paragraphs Yes By default, you only need to press the Return key once (not twice). See the Typora documentation for more information.
Line Breaks Yes By default, you need to press Command-Shift-Return. See the Typora documentation for more information.
Bold Yes
Italic Yes
Blockquotes Yes
Ordered Lists Yes
Unordered Lists Yes
Code Yes
Horizontal Rules Yes
Links Yes See the Typora documentation for instructions on linking to files on your computer.
Images Yes To insert images from your computer, use the options under Format > Images.
Tables Yes
Fenced Code Blocks Yes
Syntax Highlighting Yes See the list of supported languages.
Footnotes Yes
Heading IDs Partial Automatically generated. For example, if you have a heading called Heading IDs, you can link to it with [link](#heading-ids). There’s apparently no way to set custom heading IDs. It’s unclear what happens when there are two identical headings.
Definition Lists No
Strikethrough Yes
Task Lists Yes
Emoji (copy and paste) Yes
Emoji (shortcodes) Yes
Highlight Yes To use this feature, open the Preferences and enable the setting under Markdown > Syntax Support.
Subscript Yes To use this feature, open the Preferences and enable the setting under Markdown > Syntax Support.
Superscript Yes To use this feature, open the Preferences and enable the setting under Markdown > Syntax Support.
Automatic URL Linking Yes
Disabling Automatic URL Linking Yes
HTML Partial See the Typora documentation for information about which HTML elements are supported.

Themes

Typora provides a variety of themes for when you export your documents. If you know CSS, you can customize these themes. Open the Preferences window and see the settings under Appearance > Themes.

Strict Mode

Typora provides strict mode settings for users who want to enforce syntax limitations on headings, ordered lists, and unordered lists. For example, you could configure unordered lists to only use hyphens and not asterisks. Configure these settings in the Preferences window under Markdown > Syntax Preference. See the Typora documentation for additional information.

Source Code Mode

You can disable Typora’s live editor by selecting View > Source Code Mode. This will reveal all of the Markdown formatting that’s hidden by the live editor.

Export Options

Typora provides a wide variety of export options under File > Export for when you’re ready to publish your Markdown document. Some of the export options, like Microsoft Word and LaTeX format, require Pandoc.

See Also