A tiny, beautiful text editor for macOS.
Open the file. Read it. Maybe change a line. Close it. No projects, no plugins, no sidebars — the editor disappears, and the content is all that's left.
Free & open source · MIT License · macOS 14+
Coming soon to the Mac App Store
Core values
Instant
Double-click a file and it opens almost immediately.
Quiet
The interface never draws more attention than the content.
Native
It behaves like a built-in macOS app.
Beautiful
Reading text is a pleasure in itself.
Disposable
There is almost nothing to configure or manage.
Nothing more than you need.
Markdown, done lightly
Headings render larger, bold renders bold — while the syntax stays visible. Tilde doesn't hide Markdown; it makes Markdown easier to read.
Reader mode
One keystroke — ⌘⇧R — renders the whole document, tables and highlighted code blocks included, read-only. Toggle it from the title bar, like Safari's Reader.
Any plain text
.txt and .md first, but .json, .yaml, .toml, .xml, .csv, .log, .env and most UTF-based text files open too — all as plain text.
Quiet highlighting
In .json, .yaml, and .toml, keys get a gentle tint. Everything else is left exactly alone.
One file, one window
A true document-based Mac app: Open With, Autosave, Versions, Recent Documents, window tabs — all standard, none reinvented.
Fast, then silent
Launches fast, and idle CPU usage is effectively zero. No background work, no indexing, no polling. Ever.
Light and dark
Light, dark, or follow the system — using macOS semantic colors. There is no theme system to manage.
Everything you expect
Undo, Find & Replace, spell check, drag-and-drop, word wrap, and optional line numbers.
What Tilde won't do.
- No terminal.
- No Git.
- No plugins.
- No project explorer.
- No note database.
- No sync.
- No accounts.
- No AI.
Tilde isn't a smaller IDE. If you need those things, Tilde is — intentionally — the wrong tool.
Your text stays yours.
- No server uploads
- No account or sign-in
- No cloud storage
- No analytics in the initial release
Every document is processed locally, on your Mac.
Just open the file.
Download for macOS