Markdown reader for iPhone & iPad
Point it at a folder of notes and read them properly. Twelve typographic themes, diagrams drawn offline, and a parser written from scratch so a document looks the way it reads. No account, no subscription, nothing phoning home.
MarkRead · v1.0
Link a folder and MarkRead reads it in place — an iCloud Drive directory, an Obsidian vault, a git checkout. Nothing is copied and nothing is uploaded; edit a file on your Mac and the change is there on the next refresh. You can also import files outright, or send them over from Files.app.
in place · no copiesThe markdown parser is written from scratch — headings, nested lists, task items, blockquotes with lazy continuation, GFM tables with per-column alignment, ==highlights==, footnote-free front matter, and syntax highlighting across thirteen languages. Every size derives from one type scale, so changing the text size rescales headings, code and rules together.
Fence a block with mermaid and it is drawn as a diagram in the active theme's colours — nodes, edges, notes and pie slices all follow the palette. Tap to open full screen and pinch to zoom. The renderer is bundled inside the app, so no network request is made at read time and there is no CDN to go down.
Per-document reading positions, restored on reopen, with a progress bar and a Continue Reading shelf in the library. A heading outline tracks your position live and is searchable. Favourites, a share sheet, and a copy button on every code block.
outline · positions · favouritesSix light, six dark. Leave Match System Appearance on and the reader swaps between your chosen pair; turn it off to pin one. Colour is used where it earns its place — the rule under an H1 carries the accent, and list markers, quote bars and table headers pick it up. Body copy stays high-contrast and quiet. Press and Night Press are this site's own palette, down to the orange.
Paper
Sepia
Meadow
Rose
Harbour
Press
Graphite
Midnight
Nord
Amethyst
Forest
Night Press
Typography
Serif, sans, rounded or monospaced. 14–28pt with adjustable line spacing, and a measure cap so lines stay readable on iPad. Display Headings sets h1–h4 in Gloock, the face used on this page.
Getting files in
Link a folder, import files, or use Files.app — MarkRead appears under On My iPhone and accepts "Open in".
Extensions
md markdown mdown mkd mdtext text txt
Highlighting
Swift, JS/TS, Python, shell, JSON, YAML/TOML, Rust, Go, C-family, HTML, CSS and SQL, with a graceful fallback for anything else.
Front matter
A leading YAML block is parsed rather than printed; title and author are used.
Images
Local images resolve relative to the document. Remote images are fetched when the document is displayed.
Built with
SwiftUI, no third-party packages. The markdown parser, the syntax highlighter and the theme system are all first-party code.
Requires
iOS 17.0 or later, on iPhone and iPad.
What it doesn't do · reference-style links · footnotes · raw HTML · definition lists · editing
MarkRead collects nothing. There is no account, no analytics, no advertising, and no server of mine for the app to talk to. Your documents, your reading positions and your preferences stay on your device.
The only time it reaches the network is when a document you open references an image by web address, or when you tap a link. Diagrams render offline. It is all written down properly, in plain English, on the privacy page.
