Marginmargin Download

Changelog

Every version, newest first. Margin updates itself, and after an update it shows you this list for the version you just installed; Settings › About says which version you are on.

0.9.09 October 2026alpha

A blank note on first run, and plain Markdown export

New

  • Get started on a first run goes straight into a blank note with a placeholder, beside example notes that now show GitHub pull request and issue cards, link cards, notes inside notes, the preview pill, highlight colours, footnotes, the [[ page picker, find and replace and the quick note.

Fixed

  • A date chip that said "Today" now says "Yesterday" as soon as you come back to Margin the next day, not at your first keystroke; the Today list and count follow the day too.
  • Help → Start Here is gone from the menu.
  • Markdown export writes plain Markdown that reads cleanly in other apps: Margin's note ids, card @ signs, highlight colours and table settings are left out, and the images and files a note uses are copied beside it. Cards no longer leave an @ in HTML, RTF and PDF exports.
  • The selection's ✦ star sits beside the drag grip again instead of on top of it, level with the grip and chevron on headings and list items too.
0.8.05 October 2026alpha

Source, Live Preview or Rendered, per note

New

  • A compact link row is spelled @@[text](url) — two sigils beside the card's one — instead of a "compact" title; notes written the old way still read and move over when the link's form is set again.
  • A heading shows its level as a glyph in the margin while the caret or pointer is on it, in every preview mode, and a click on the glyph changes the level or folds the section.
  • A highlight keeps its colour at the front of the span — =={blue}text== — so the token sits with the mark it belongs to; notes written the old way, ==text=={blue}, still read and move over the next time their colour is set.
  • A pill beside the word count names the preview mode the note is in, and a click on it switches between Source, Live Preview and Rendered.
  • Each note can show its Markdown as source, live preview or fully rendered — View ▸ Preview or ⌥⌘M, with the default for new notes in Settings ▸ Editor.

Fixed

  • A # alone on a line is no longer drawn as an empty heading — it may be a tag on its way — until a space or a title follows it.
  • A date chip and a tag chip on the same line now sit level with each other.
  • A level-6 heading keeps the case you typed instead of being set in capitals.
  • In Rendered mode the highlight colour swatch still appears when the caret is in a highlight, with the == kept hidden.
  • Typing ##Title without the space puts the space in for you, so the line is a heading rather than text.
  • Typing # or ## at the start of a line no longer pops the tag list — a heading is being typed; a tag still completes from its first letter, and from a bare # inside a line.
0.7.030 September 2026alpha

Find and replace in a note

New

  • Find and replace in a note: case, regexp and whole-word matching, Replace or Replace All, opened from Edit ▸ Find, ⌥⌘R or the chevron on the find bar, with Enter cycling matches and Tab hopping between the two fields.
0.6.230 September 2026alpha

The quick-note hotkey survives an update

Fixed

  • Fix the quick-note hotkey going missing after an update: the app now waits for launchd to drop the old agent before loading the new one, and notices when the load is refused
0.6.130 September 2026alpha

The quick-note agent runs as its own helper app

Fixed

  • Run the quick-note agent as a helper app of its own inside Margin
0.6.029 September 2026alpha

The list is the tree, folders rename in place, and the icon stays put

New

  • A folder's name is edited in place: click the title on its page to rename it, and New folder inside now makes the folder at once and opens it with the name ready to type over.
  • A note opened in its own window brings its tree along: the path in the bar, the notes inside it in the margin, and a click on either opens that note in the same window.
  • A note opened in its own window shows the whole tree it belongs to as an outline beside the page: click to open, fold, drag to move, and a button in the bar to put it away.
  • The notes list is the tree: a note with notes inside expands in place under All Notes, every level a full card, and resting on a breadcrumb drops a menu of what is inside it. The tree in the margin is gone.

Fixed

  • The icon theme you pick now stays with the app while Margin is closed: Finder, Spotlight, ⌘-Tab and the Dock tile all show it, and a theme changed while Margin runs reaches the Dock tile at once. If the Dock keeps an old icon after this update, remove Margin from the Dock and add it back once.
0.5.126 September 2026alpha

Selections wrap, notes keep their place, and one Margin per open

Fixed

  • A note that changes on disk while the caret is elsewhere no longer jumps back to the top; the view and the caret stay where they were.
  • Opening a note or a margin:// link while only the background agent is running starts one Margin, not two side by side in the Dock.
  • Typing a Markdown marker, quote or bracket over a selection now wraps it (typing it again unwraps it), and a backtick before a word no longer doubles up.
0.5.020 September 2026alpha

Notes can hold notes — and two fixes

New

  • A note can hold notes: a folder of the same name beside a note is its subtree, shown in the note's margin and under its text, with Move to…, drag, and a Trash that takes the whole subtree together.

Fixed

  • Dropping a file onto a note with the app zoomed in lands it where the cursor is, and the "Drop to attach" label follows the cursor instead of drifting away from it.
  • The editor's built-in Find and Replace strip can no longer appear at the bottom of a note; whatever asked for it opens Margin's own find bar instead.
0.4.218 September 2026alpha

Bare links are chips, cards show the review state, and updates survive a second Margin

Fixed

  • A pull request card says where the review stands — approved, changes requested, or a review still required — with a small glyph beside the state, and an inline chip's dot goes red when changes were asked for.
  • A web address typed into a note with nothing around it — https://…, www.… or <https://…> — is a link chip like any other, and turns back into text on the line being edited; Enter after one wraps it as a link with the page's title, in a list item as much as in a sentence.
  • An update no longer fails when a second copy of Margin is running. The two were staging the download under the same name in the same cache, so one lost its archive mid-rename and the other read a half-written signature, called the update refused and deleted it.
  • Right-click a link chip or a link card and Copy link puts its address on the clipboard.
0.4.117 September 2026alpha

GitHub cards read in one request, and a ticked todo dims its links

Fixed

  • Pull request and issue cards ask GitHub once for everything on screen, every five minutes rather than every minute; Settings → Editor → GitHub → Refresh every sets the interval.
  • A link, page link, attachment or preview card on a ticked task item now dims with the item's text.
0.4.017 September 2026alpha

Pull request and issue links show their state, checks and reviews — and bug fixes

New

  • ⌘Q asks whether to keep the quick-note hotkey running, ⌥⌘Q always stops it, and a stopped agent stays stopped, so Margin can be dragged to the Trash without a trip to Settings.
  • Pull request and issue links show public state even without the GitHub CLI, read straight from GitHub with no token or account.
  • Pull request and issue links show their state, checks and reviews, read through your own gh — as a card, a one-line row, or a chip in the sentence — and Settings → Editor → Link cards says which form a pasted link takes.

Fixed

  • ⌘= and ⌘- now zoom the whole window rather than only the note's type; ⇧⌘= and ⇧⌘- size the editor text on its own, and the two stack.
  • A link clicked out to a browser no longer stays tinted: hover affordances wait for the window to come back.
  • A selected card shows it, a copied card takes the form of wherever you paste it, and the link context menu offers all three forms instead of one toggle.
  • After editing a link in the link dialog, the cursor lands after the link instead of in front of it.
  • Launch at login shows up in Login Items as Margin, not as software from the developer.
  • Link cards and code blocks now grow and shrink with the editor's text size, and clicking a link opens it without highlighting it or moving your caret.
  • Settings → Editor → Link cards is less than half its old height: the live preview draws one kind of link at a time behind a switch, and where GitHub reads its state from is now its own group.
  • The / menu now opens anywhere you type a /, so a date can go at the end of a todo; the block rows show at the start of a line and after a heading or list marker.
  • The compact link card no longer reads larger than the full card it stands in for: its title, meta line and glyph all sit a step under it.
0.3.013 September 2026alpha

Footnotes, a picker behind [[, double-click to open a note in its own Window and bug fixes

New

  • Footnotes. Press ⌥⌘E or type /footnote, write the note next to the cursor, and it lands at the bottom of the page as plain [^1] Markdown, numbered for you.
  • [[ opens the page picker, the same as @. Type a few letters, pick a page, and it lands as a [[Name]] wikilink; ⇧⌘K with nothing selected opens the picker between the brackets.
  • Double-click a note in the list to open it in its own window, centered on your screen and sized to fit it.
  • Choose where on-device models are kept in Settings → Intelligence, and reuse a folder that already holds them.

Fixed

  • Opening Margin no longer puts a second Margin in the Dock. The quick-note agent stays a background process when a Dock, Finder or Spotlight click lands on it, so one ⌘Q quits the app again.
  • Check spelling while typing now underlines misspelt words; the setting had no effect before.
  • The command palette's Open Settings row opens Settings, its AI rows carry every built-in action and refuse cleanly when the provider is missing, and it gains Show Untagged and the named themes.
  • The Note menu enables Restore and Delete Permanently only for a note in the trash, and Move to Trash only for a live one.
0.2.111 September 2026alpha

Loose todo spellings become real todos, and a fresh install follows the system appearance.

New

  • Accept [], -[], *[] and +[] as a todo when a space follows, writing the standard - [ ] form with the bullet you typed, and count * [ ] and + [ ] todos everywhere - [ ] already did.

Fixed

  • Follow the system appearance on a fresh install, so Margin opens light on a Mac set to light instead of always starting dark.
  • Start Here now says a todo is a hyphen, a space, then square brackets with a space inside, and calls the hyphen a hyphen throughout.
0.2.09 September 2026alpha

Chords for every formatting action, an image dialog, and Margin tells you what changed.

New

  • Add /link and /image to the slash menu, so both dialogs open the way every other block does.
  • Add an image dialog on ⌥⌘K and Format ▸ Image that places a picture from a typed address or a picked file with its alt text in one go, and edits one already in a note from the caret or its right-click menu.
  • Every formatting action in the menus now has a keyboard chord — headings on ⌥⌘1 – ⌥⌘6, and the style bar's Heading button cycles all six levels rather than stopping at three — and the sidebar, note list and the Todo and Today filters moved off ⌥⌘ plus a digit to make room.
  • What's new — after an update, Margin shows what changed in the release you just installed, and a row in the sidebar brings it back.

Fixed

  • Fix ⌘K leaving an empty []() behind when its dialog is dismissed without an address, so thinking better of a link no longer leaves a dead one in the note.
  • Fix a link written without https:// doing nothing when clicked, so [home](example.com) opens in the browser and an address Margin won't open now says so.
  • Fix a note's own window keeping its old title after you edit the note's first line.
  • Fix code blocks and tables ignoring the editor's text size, so the size slider now reaches them.
  • Fix Paste as Plain Text pasting nothing at all, and ⌃N and ⌃F opening a new note and the find bar instead of moving the caret.
  • Fix the link and image dialogs opening off the bottom of the window, so one anchored to the last visible line now opens above itself.
0.1.17 September 2026alpha

The first alpha. Everything below is new, because everything is.

Margin is a Markdown notes app for the Mac. A space is a plain folder of .md files on your disk, and Margin is a fast view over it: rename, move or edit the files with anything else and it keeps up. Nothing leaves your Mac unless you run an AI action, and you choose where that goes.

The editor

  • Live Markdown as you type: headings, lists and todos, quotes, code blocks, tables you click into, dividers, footnotes, inline and block math.
  • Callouts in five kinds: Note, Tip, Important, Warning, Caution.
  • Fold a heading or every heading; drag a line or a block to reorder it; Tab and Shift-Tab indent lists.
  • Type / for a menu: headings, todo, bullet, quote, callout, table, divider, code block, and dates such as today, tomorrow or next week.
  • Links, wiki links between notes, backlinks, a table of contents, tags, and five highlight colours. Pasting a link fetches the page's title for you.
  • Images and files: drop or paste them into a note and Margin copies them into the space's own assets folder. Images show inline, PDFs can preview, anything else becomes a card.
  • Find in the note, change case, move lines, duplicate or merge notes, and a formatting bar you can dock in the editor corner.
  • Focus Mode, a note pinned above other windows, a note in its own window, and Print.

Spaces

  • Open any folder of Markdown as a space, including one you already keep for another app or in a git repo.
  • Edits made outside Margin show up as they happen. Deleted notes go to a trash you can restore from.
  • Import a space or a folder of Markdown; export a whole space, or a note as Markdown, HTML, Rich Text or PDF.
  • A command palette that runs any command or finds any note; jump between spaces with ⌘1 to ⌘9 or ⌃Tab.
  • Every note has a stable link of its own, so a link survives a rename or a move.
  • First run offers seven example notes that teach the editor as you read them, or one blank note.

AI, where you want it or nowhere

  • Six actions on a selection: Reword, Shorten, Fix grammar, Summarize, Outline, Expand. Reword has a tone you can set, including your own.
  • Your own actions: write a prompt once in Settings › Intelligence and it joins the menu; or ask anything in the moment.
  • Four ways to run them: your own Anthropic API key, kept in the macOS keychain; a Claude Code or Codex command already installed on your Mac; a model downloaded once and run entirely on your Mac; or Ollama on this machine.
  • Every result is a proposal you accept or reject. Nothing runs on its own, and nothing is sent that you did not select.

A quick note from anywhere

  • ⌃⌥Space from any app opens a small capture window; save files it into the space you choose.
  • The hotkey keeps working after you quit Margin and at login. Settings › Shortcuts turns that off, rebinds the chord, and chooses where the window opens.
  • A margin command for the Terminal opens files and folders, from the same pane.

Settings

  • Twenty-nine themes, from Solarized, Nord, Dracula and Gruvbox to Tokyo Night, Rosé Pine, Catppuccin, Everforest and Kanagawa, most in a light and a dark face; light, dark or system mode; an accent colour from the system or your own; and a choice of app icon.
  • Start at login, reopen where you left off, and editor behaviours down to how a checked todo behaves.
  • Anonymous usage statistics, with nothing from your notes in them, help find crashes; switch them off in Settings › Privacy. The privacy policy lists everything that ever leaves the Mac.

Updates and licences

  • Margin keeps itself up to date: a new build installs when you quit, or sooner if you choose Restart to Update. Every update is signed, and one that does not verify is refused.
  • The alpha is free, and stays free for 30 days after 1.0 ships. Alpha users can buy an early-supporter lifetime licence from Settings › Licence for $45; it activates the day 1.0 ships, and every licence covers two Macs at a time. Fourteen days, no questions, on refunds.

And lots more that is easier to find than to list. Help › Send Feedback… opens a mail with the build details filled in, and a person reads it.

Rough edges

  • Apple silicon only, macOS 14 or later.
  • Help › Open Logs Folder opens an empty folder: nothing writes a log yet.
  • This is an alpha. Keep a backup of your notes; they are files, so Time Machine or a copy of the folder is enough.