Legible

Markdown, made for reading.

The Mac app that turns any folder of markdown into a calm reading experience. Point it at your Obsidian vault, an export from Claude, a folder a colleague shared. It just reads.

macOS 13+ · Apple Silicon native · Free 14-day trial

You edit your notes in a tool built for editing. What about reading them?

Legible is for the other half of your week. The half where you go back, re-read, follow a thread, recover an idea you wrote down two months ago and almost forgot. It reads your whole vault as something you can actually sit down with.

Compatibility

Built for Obsidian.
Works with any markdown.

Legible renders Obsidian-Flavoured Markdown natively — wikilinks, callouts, embeds and block references all read exactly as you wrote them. Point it at any other folder of .md files and it reads those too. Tool-specific syntax from Logseq, Bear, NotePlan or Joplin shows as plain markdown today; first-class support is coming in v0.2.

Features

Built for reading.

The whole folder, not one file at a time. Live with your editor. Reading-first by design. Typography that reads like a book.

Folder

Open a folder, not a file.

Point Legible at your Obsidian vault, or any folder of markdown. Browse from the sidebar, jump between notes, search across everything with ⌘K. Works with Joplin, Logseq, NotePlan, or a folder you made yesterday.

A Legible window open on a vault, with the sidebar showing Essays, Reading, and Journal folders and the architecture-of-quiet-spaces note actively open.
Live

Edit in one window. Read in the other.

Open Obsidian on the left, Legible on the right. Save a note, watch it update. No reload, no plugin, no round trip. Works with Obsidian, VS Code, vim, anything that saves .md to disk.

Two windows side by side. Obsidian on the left showing markdown source; Legible on the right showing the rendered note in serif type with a callout block.
Reading-first

A reader, not an editor.

No edit toggle, no accidental keystrokes. The interface only knows how to read and navigate. Press z to drop the sidebar and read full-width. The chrome gets out of the way because reading isn't writing.

A Legible window in reading-first mode: no sidebar, no toolbar, just the rendered note and a margin.
Type

Typography that reads like a book.

Source Serif for the body. DM Sans for the chrome. Real italics, real small caps, real OpenType. Light, dark, sepia, and high-contrast reading modes. No configuration required.

A Legible window in sepia reading mode showing the same note rendered in warm cream and brown ink.

One price. Yours.

Pay once. Own it. No subscription, no expiry, no per-vault upgrade fee.

$39
One-time. Forever.
Get Legible

14-day trial. No card up front.

  • Every feature. Nothing held back.
  • A year of updates included.
  • No subscription. No account. No tenancy.
  • Works offline. Your files never leave your Mac.
  • Apple Silicon native.

No AI. Just your words.