BadWrite

A Markdown editor and note-taking app developed in Sicily with wine. 🍷✍️

BadWrite is a simple, fast and distraction-free Markdown editor for Windows. Write on one side, press F5 and see the result.

Beta software. BadWrite is in beta: it works, but you may find rough edges. Please keep a backup of important documents and tell me what you find.

Download

Get the latest version from the GitHub page.

1. Download the .zip file from the latest release.
2. Extract it to any folder.
3. Run BadWrite.exe.

The SHA-256 checksum of each file is listed in the release notes, so you can verify your download.

Windows SmartScreen

BadWrite is not code-signed yet, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC" the first time. Click More info → Run anyway. You can compare the checksum with the one in the release notes before running it.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit)
• .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64, if not already installed)
• Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime (already included in Windows 11 and in up-to-date Windows 10)

Features

Writing

• Markdown syntax highlighting while you type
• Continues lists and task lists when you press Enter
• Table insertion and automatic table formatting (Ctrl+Shift+T)
• Drag & drop images into the document
• Find and replace with a floating panel (Ctrl+F / Ctrl+H)
• Focus mode (F8) and typewriter mode (F9)
• Full screen with clock (F11)
• In-app web search

Navigation

• Outline panel to move through long documents
• Explorer panel for a whole folder of notes, with full-text search

Spell checking

• Spell checker as you type, with suggestions and a personal dictionary
• Hunspell dictionaries (.dic / .aff): some dictionaries are included, and you can add other languages by copying them into the Dictionaries folder

Preview and export

• HTML preview synchronized with the cursor (F5)
• Export to HTML page (with a choice of theme and optional copy of the images), HTML code, PDF and DOCX
• Copy the HTML of the document or of the selection to the clipboard
• Print

Appearance

• 11 themes, including Dark, Coffee, Midnight Blue, Sky Blue, Forest, Sepia, Solarized (light and dark), Nord and Antique Rose, plus Automatic to follow Windows

Files

• Automatic detection of the text encoding (UTF-8, ANSI, UTF-16) and the option to reopen or save with another one
• Autosave and recovery of unsaved text at the next start
• Recent files and folders

Keyboard shortcuts

Feedback

This is a beta, and your feedback is what makes it better.

• Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue.

When reporting a bug, please include the BadWrite version (shown in Help → About), your Windows version and the steps to reproduce it.

License and credits

BadWrite is © Stefano Arcidiacono. It is free to use, but it is not open source:
all rights are reserved. Please do not redistribute modified versions;
to share BadWrite, link to this page.

BadWrite uses open-source components, listed with their licenses in THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt and in Help → About: AvalonEdit, Markdig, Open XML SDK, HtmlToOpenXml, AngleSharp, Microsoft.Data.Sqlite, WebView2, WeCantSpell.Hunspell and some dictionaries from LibreOffice.

About this page

This webpage is made with BadWrite; you can view the source file here.