Feather MD
A native, dual-pane Markdown editor that opens instantly and stays out of your way.
Live Web Demo
Engineered to write. Built to fly.
Bidirectional Scroll Sync
Scroll either the CodeMirror 6 editor or the preview pane, and the other pane follows perfectly with ratio-based tracking.
Advanced Printing Engine
Bypasses browser native limits to print beautiful, clean, multi-page documents without hostnames or page URLs.
Signed Background Updates
Release packages are cryptographically signed with Ed25519 and download quietly in the background. The status bar tells you when it's ready — you restart on your own terms.
OS File Association
Integrates directly with Windows and Linux. Double-click any markdown file to launch instantly from your file manager.
Premium Unified Header
Combines window titlebar and editor toolbar into a singular, mathematically centered bar with floating interactive tooltips.
10 Built-In UI Themes
Five light and five dark themes. Switch instantly under 1ms with custom repainting locked to CSS root variables.
External File Watcher
Monitors the open file through event-driven OS hooks (the Rust notify crate) for 0% idle CPU, prompting you instantly when another program changes it on disk.
Keyboard-First Workflows
Fast keyboard toggles for line numbers, word wrap, and scroll sync, plus Alt-leader chords to cycle themes, fonts, and tab size — and find/replace.
How It Compares
| Metric / Feature | Feather MD | VS Code | Typora | Obsidian | Notion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Installer Size | ~5 MB | ~90 MB | ~85 MB | ~110 MB | ~150 MB |
| Resident Memory (RAM) | ~50 MB | ~300 MB | ~150 MB | ~400 MB | ~250 MB |
| Cold Startup Time | < 100 ms | 1 to 3 s | < 1 s | 1 to 2 s | 2 to 4 s |
| Dual-pane preview | Built-in | Extension / split | Hybrid only | Plugin | No |
| Native Binary | Yes (Tauri) | No (Electron) | No (Electron) | No (Electron) | No (Electron) |
| Telemetry | None | Opt-out | Opt-out | Opt-in | Full Tracking |
| Licensing & Cost | Free, MIT | Free, MIT | Paid | Free, freemium | Proprietary |
The Technology Stack
Tauri 2 (Rust)
Natively compiled Rust core utilizing host webviews to ship a secure, 5 MB package with zero Electron runtime bloat.
CodeMirror 6
Modular, tree-shaken editor core supporting active-line highlighting, quote auto-pairing, code folding, and find & replace.
Marked + DOMPurify
Synchronous Markdown compiler with DOMPurify XSS protection, on-demand Highlight.js syntax loading, and lazy-loaded KaTeX math and Mermaid diagrams.