Glifa for Mac

The Markdown editor you can ask for anything.

Write plain Markdown that looks finished while you type. Select some text, press ⇧⌘R and ask for a table, a diagram, a summary or a better sentence. Nothing changes until you click Replace.

Download for Mac Buy for $14.99

Free for 15 days. No account, no card. macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon.

Glifa with a note full of Markdown: a Proofread proposal on the first paragraph, then a callout, a table, a formula and a Mermaid diagram.

Tables, diagrams, first drafts

Turn notes into a table, a table into a chart, a list of steps into a diagram, or an empty line into a first draft. The answer shows up in your document with every change marked, and nothing is final until you click Replace.

Ferry trip.md

Packing

Rain jackets and a warm layer eachSeasickness tabletsChargers and a power bankPrinted tickets and the harbor permitSnacks and two bottles of water

Weather.md

Oslo had 4 °C and rain, Lisbon 17 °C and sun, and Warsaw 6 °C with clouds.

~~Oslo had 4 °C and rain, Lisbon 17 °C and sun, and Warsaw 6 °C with clouds.~~

City	Temp	Sky
Oslo	4 °C	Rain
Lisbon	17 °C	Sun
Warsaw	6 °C	Clouds

Ask in your own words

“Turn these notes into a table”
“Draw these steps as a flowchart”
“Write an introduction for this section”
“Give me the five key points”
“Make this sound less like a robot wrote it”
“Translate this into Spanish”
“Add a column with each city’s population”
“Sort the table by date”
“Chart these numbers”
“Clean up what I just pasted”
“Tag this note and describe it”
“Describe this image for VoiceOver”

Some of these are actions in the Edit menu. For the rest, type what you want. If the answer is almost right, Revise… lets you ask again.

Make your own actions

An action is a Markdown file with an instruction in it. Put one in the AI Actions folder (Settings ▸ AI ▸ Show Actions in Finder) and it appears in the menu right away, ready for ⇧⌘R. The built-in ones are files too, so you can edit them the same way.

Press Release.md---
change: rewrite
---
Rewrite the text as a short press release:
a headline, a dateline, two paragraphs,
and a quote from the team. Keep every
fact and number as it is.

Glifa checks that your tables and code come back

AI actions work on the text you picked. Then Glifa compares the answer with what you sent: links, images, note links, footnotes, code, formulas and tables.

If something goes missing, you see a warning before you click Replace:

1 link removed

Release.md Translate to German

~~Release steps~~ Schritte zur Veröffentlichung

~~Run~~ Führe make release~~, then update the~~ aus und aktualisiere dann das ~~changelog~~Änderungsprotokoll.

~~Step~~ Schritt	~~Owner~~ Zuständig
Build	Marta
~~Upload~~ Hochladen	Jonas

unchangedmake release VERSION=1.2

Glifa showing a Proofread proposal in a draft: the misspelled words struck through, the corrections marked in green, with Replace and Discard below. — Proofread on a real draft, in Glifa.

For whole documents

Review Whole Document…: Proofreads or rewrites the whole file and marks every change. Go through them and keep or revert each one, from the keyboard if you like.
Revise…: Almost right? Ask again on the open proposal: shorter, more formal, keep the second sentence.
Translate Document…: Writes a translated copy next to the original, with the Markdown kept.
Describe Image: Writes alt text for an image, so VoiceOver can read it aloud.

You pick the AI

Glifa doesn’t run any AI servers. When you use an action, your text goes straight from your Mac to the provider you picked, and nowhere else. We don’t add a fee on top.

With your API key

Anthropic
OpenAI
Google Gemini
Mistral
OpenRouter
Groq
Cerebras

Or any service that works with the OpenAI API. Your keys are stored in the Keychain.

With your subscription

Claude Code
Codex

Glifa uses the command-line tool you’re already signed in to.

On your Mac

Apple Intelligence
LM Studio
Ollama

The model runs on your Mac, so the text stays on your Mac.

Don’t want AI at all? Turn it off in Settings. We won’t ask why. Or keep it on and list folders it should never read.

# House style

- American English, short sentences.
- The product is “Northwind,” never “NW.”
- Talk to the reader as “you.”
- Leave headings as they are.

A house style for each folder

Add a file called AI.md to a folder and write down how its notes should sound. Every action on those notes reads it first.

release-plan.md — changed by another app

Beta builds go out on ~~Fridays~~Tuesdays, after the nightly tests pass.

Each build lists its known issues in KNOWN.md.

See what your agents changed

When Claude Code, Codex or a script edits a note you have open, Glifa marks every change. Keep it or undo it, one change at a time.

Oh, and it’s a Markdown editor

Everything you write is plain Markdown in files you own, and Glifa shows all of it the way it should look: tables you edit right there, TeX math, Mermaid diagrams, code, callouts, footnotes, tasks and links between notes.

Write Markdown. Read a page.

Glifa formats each line as soon as you leave it. Click back into a line and its Markdown is there again, so you always know what’s actually in the file.

Headings
Emphasis and links
Task lists
Tables
Math
Diagrams
Quotes
Links between notes

Field notes

The ferry left at 6:40, an hour late. The rest is in the log.

Print the tide tablesAsk Marta about the harbor permit

City	Temp	Sky
Oslo	4 °C	Rain
Lisbon	17 °C	Sun

x = \frac{- b \pm \sqrt{b^{2} - 4 a c}}{2 a}

Check the forecast again before the return trip.

The permit is with the Harbor office, same as last year.

A Note callout and a table of harbor berths, drawn in Glifa.

Callouts and tables

Notes, tips and warnings, written the way GitHub and Obsidian write them. Tables you edit in place: type in the cells, add or move rows and columns, set the alignment, and let Tidy Table Source line up the Markdown for you.

An inline formula and a Mermaid flowchart, drawn in Glifa.

Math and diagrams

TeX inline and in blocks, with numbered equations. Mermaid flowcharts, sequence diagrams, timelines, Gantt and pie charts, redrawn as you type.

A task list with a wikilink and a footnote, and a Python code block, drawn in Glifa.

Tasks, links, footnotes and code

Check off tasks right on the page. Link notes with wikilinks, or embed one note in another. Footnotes are numbered for you, and code is highlighted in more than a hundred languages.

The note Harbor survey as Markdown source in Glifa. — **Markdown Source** View ▸ Markdown Source shows the file exactly as it is saved.

The note Harbor survey drawn as a page in Glifa. — **Live Preview** The same file as a page. Wherever your cursor is, the Markdown shows up again.

Glifa in Focus Mode: one paragraph clear, the others dimmed.

Focus, Typewriter and Reading Mode

Focus Mode dims everything except the paragraph you’re in. Typewriter Mode keeps your line in the middle of the window. Reading Mode lets you read, select and copy without changing anything by accident.

Glifa comparing a note with its April draft: changed cells and lines marked, with Keep and Use File beside each difference.

See what changed

File ▸ Compare With marks every difference from an older version, or from another file, right in your document. Keep your version or take the other one, one difference at a time or all at once.

Glifa’s Page Preview: the note as a printed page, with No Issues in the sidebar.

Export, print and share

Page Preview shows your pages before you export and marks any table, formula, diagram or image that a page break would split. Then export to PDF with page setup and an outline, to HTML, Word, RTF or an image, or to a folder or ZIP with all its pictures. Have Pandoc? Then every format it writes, too.

Everything else in the editor

Writing

Live Preview and Markdown Source
Focus, Typewriter and Reading Mode
Highlight Parts of Speech
Spelling and grammar, smart quotes and dashes
Word, character and line counts
Document Statistics
Paste as Markdown
Table of contents, date and time

Markdown

Tables with Table Size… and Tidy Table Source
TeX math, inline and in blocks
Mermaid diagrams
Code blocks in a hundred languages
Footnotes, inline ones too
Callouts and task lists
Front matter
Highlight, subscript and superscript
HTML and comments

Notes and folders

Sidebar with folders, outline and tags
Document List
Open Quickly
Quick Note and Today’s Note
Obsidian vaults: wikilinks, embeds, backlinks
Copy Link to Block
Rename Heading… with links updated
Extract Section… to a new note
Find and Replace in a folder
Tabs, pinned folders, Float on Top

Versions and recovery

Versions and Compare With
Unsaved text back after a crash
Changes from other apps reviewed
Check Links…
Clean Up Unused Images…
Download All Web Images
Convert to UTF-8

Export and print

PDF with Page Setup, outline and Page Preview
HTML, Word, RTF and images
A folder or ZIP with its images
Every Pandoc format, and Import…
Print
Quick Look in the Finder
Eleven themes, and your Typora themes

Eleven themes

Each theme changes the fonts, colors and line length, in light and dark. Pick one to see the same note in it.

Also System, Classic and High Contrast, and any Typora theme you import.

The note Ferry crossing in the theme Folio

The note Ferry crossing in the theme Lilac

Your notes stay .md files, in folders you choose.

Glifa works with ordinary folders. There’s no database. Sync them, back them up, put them in Git or open them in any other app.

Crossing/
├── .obsidian/
├── AI.md
├── Ferry crossing.md
├── Harbor office.md
├── Weather log.md
└── Drafts/
    └── On ferries.md

Obsidian vaults: Open a vault as it is. Wikilinks, embeds, backlinks and tags all work, and Glifa doesn’t convert anything.
Folders and tags: The sidebar shows the folder and the document’s outline; the Document List shows the notes in a folder or under a tag.
Links that update: Rename a heading or a file and the links to it are updated for you.
Open Quickly and Quick Note: Open any file by typing part of its name. Start a note from anywhere on the Mac.
Find in a whole folder: Find and Replace across every file, with whole-word matching that works in Chinese and Japanese too.
Focus and Typewriter: Dim everything but the paragraph you’re on, or keep the line you’re typing in the middle of the window.
Export: PDF with page setup, an outline and a page preview, or HTML, Word, RTF and images. With Pandoc installed, every format it writes.

We’d hate for you to lose a word

It saves as you type and keeps older versions of every file. Compare With shows what changed since any of them.

You get your text back after a crash If Glifa or your Mac stops, your unsaved text is back the next time you open Glifa.

If a save fails, you’ll know If the disk is full, the file is locked or the drive is gone, Glifa tells you and keeps your text.

Changes from other apps are marked When sync, a script or an agent edits a note, you see each change and keep or undo it.

How Glifa compares

What each app does on the Mac as installed, according to each maker’s website on November 13, 2026. Plugins and extra subscriptions don’t count. Coming from Typora? Glifa vs Typora in detail

	Glifa	Typora	iA Writer	Bear	Obsidian
Formatting drawn in place as you type	Yes	Yes	PartlyTables, math and images show in Preview	Yes	Yes
Notes are plain .md files in your folders	Yes	Yes	Yes	NoNotes live in Bear’s database	Yes
Math and Mermaid diagrams built in	Yes	Yes	PartlyMath in Preview, no Mermaid	Yes	Yes
Opens an Obsidian vault as it is	Yes	No	PartlyWikilinks, no backlinks	NoImports a copy	Yes
AI editing built in	YesEvery change marked; your choice of provider	No	NoAuthorship marks text from AI	NoOutside assistants can reach notes	NoThrough community plugins
Word (.docx) export built in	Yes	PartlyThrough Pandoc	Yes	PartlyWith Bear Pro	NoPDF only
Earlier versions of a file, built in	YesWith Compare With	PartlyMac only, through File ▸ Revert To	PartlyBrowsing all versions needs iCloud	Not documented	YesFile recovery snapshots
Price on the Mac	$14.99at launch, then $19.99	$14.99once	$49.99once	FreePro $29.99 a year	FreeSync costs extra
Free trial	15 days	15 days	7 days	Free; Pro trial 7 days	Free to use
Runs on	MacWindows and Linux to come	Mac, Windows, Linux	Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad	Mac, iPhone, iPad	Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, Android

Typora, iA Writer, Bear and Obsidian are trademarks of their owners, and Glifa isn’t affiliated with any of them. Spotted something out of date? Write to [email protected] and we’ll fix it.

Sources

Typora: typora.io, Version control, Export, Links
iA Writer: ia.net/writer, Pricing, Markdown Guide, Wikilinks, Authorship, Versions and backups
Bear: bear.app, Where are notes stored, Migrate from Obsidian, Export
Obsidian: obsidian.md, File recovery, Pricing, Advanced syntax, PDF export

Made for the Mac

Real Mac controls: The toolbar, sidebar, menus and Settings are real Mac controls, and Glifa follows Light and Dark mode, Increase Contrast and Reduce Transparency.
VoiceOver and the keyboard: VoiceOver reads the whole document, tables and formulas included, and tells you how an AI action is going. You can review every change from the keyboard.
Windows and Linux: We’re building Windows and Linux versions that use the same editor.

In eleven languages

Markdown, typeset as you write.
Markdown, składany w trakcie pisania.
Markdown, beim Schreiben gesetzt.
Le Markdown, mis en forme pendant que vous écrivez.
Markdown, con formato mientras escribes.
Markdown, impaginato mentre scrivi.
Markdown, formatado enquanto você escreve.
Markdownを、書きながら組版。
Markdown을 쓰는 동안 바로 조판합니다.
Markdown，边写边排版。
Markdown，邊寫邊排版。

Pay once. Keep it.

$14.99one-time purchase, plus local tax

Launch price. It goes up to $19.99 later.

Buy Glifa Download for Mac

Try everything free for 15 days first. No account, no card.
Use it on up to 3 Macs.
Every 1.x update is included.
AI doesn’t cost extra on our side. Your provider might charge you; a model on your Mac won’t.
Paddle handles the payment, tax and receipt for us.