Marked 2 is a dedicated Markdown preview application for macOS that watches any file you are writing and renders a live, styled preview in a separate window — independent of your text editor.
What is Marked 2?
Marked 2 is a standalone Mac app built by Brett Terpstra that turns any Markdown file into a beautifully rendered document in real time, without caring which editor produced it. It is not itself an editor — it is a smart, persistent preview engine you position beside your workspace of choice.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. Because Marked 2 is editor-agnostic, it works seamlessly alongside BBEdit, Obsidian, Nova, iA Writer, VS Code, or even a Terminal buffer. You write wherever you think best; Marked 2 handles the visual truth of what you are actually producing.
What does Marked 2 do best?
Marked 2 earns its keep through a combination of style flexibility and document intelligence that no editor-bundled preview comes close to matching. You can apply custom CSS themes — including community-built ones that mimic Notion, GitHub, or academic paper styles — so the preview matches the eventual output environment, not just a generic renderer.
Beyond visual rendering, Marked 2 surfaces a surprisingly deep layer of writing analytics. The readability panel grades your prose against Flesch-Kincaid and several other scales, flagging overlong sentences, passive voice density, and vocabulary complexity. The keyword density view reveals when you have leaned too hard on a particular word across a long document. For anyone producing SEO copy, long-form journalism, or technical documentation, these panels are genuinely useful rather than decorative.
- Multi-file stitching: include directives let you stitch chapter files into a single preview, which is invaluable for book-length projects
- Export depth: one-click export to PDF, HTML, DOCX, RTF, or ePub with print-ready CSS control
- Custom processors: hook in Pandoc, MultiMarkdown, or your own shell script as the rendering engine
- CriticMarkup support: track editorial changes inline, colour-coded, without any plugin setup
How much does Marked 2 cost?
Marked 2 is a one-time paid purchase available directly from the developer's website and through the Mac App Store. There is no subscription, no seat limit, and no feature tiers — you buy it once and own it. Brett Terpstra has maintained the app actively for well over a decade, which makes the single-purchase model feel like good value against the alternatives.
Who should use Marked 2?
Marked 2 is built for writers who have already settled on a Markdown-fluent workflow and want to stop arguing with their editor's built-in preview. If you write technical documentation, long-form articles, academic papers, or developer READMEs — and you care that the rendered output looks correct before you export — Marked 2 slots into that gap precisely.
It is less compelling if you are just starting with Markdown and need an all-in-one editor. In that case, iA Writer or Typora offer a more self-contained experience. Obsidian users with the Live Preview plugin may also find their needs already met. But if you live in BBEdit, Nova, or VS Code and find those editors' Markdown previews shallow or clumsy, Marked 2 is the dedicated tool those editors were never going to become.
What are the best Marked 2 alternatives?
The closest competitors depend on what you value. Typora fuses editing and preview into a single surface — cleaner if you want one window, limiting if you want editor choice. iA Writer offers a polished writing environment with preview, but only inside its own editor. Obsidian renders Markdown live in a split pane and has a vast plugin ecosystem, but it is optimised for networked notes rather than export-ready documents. Ulysses is a premium writing environment that handles preview internally, though it imposes its own document model.
None of these rivals Marked 2 for editor-agnosticism combined with export control and writing analytics. The niche is narrow, but Marked 2 owns it.
How does Marked 2 compare to VS Code's Markdown preview?
VS Code's built-in Markdown preview is functional but spartan — it renders CommonMark, it scrolls in sync, and it does little else. Marked 2 layers on top: custom CSS themes, readability metrics, multi-file merging, CriticMarkup, Pandoc processing, and polished export pipelines. If VS Code is your editor, running Marked 2 as the preview pane is a meaningful upgrade rather than a redundancy.
