Dawn vs Marked

Dawn is the calm, beautiful place to read Markdown on your iPhone. These days your AI assistant answers in Markdown — headings, lists, code, tables. On a phone, that usually shows up as a wall of raw symbols. Open it in Dawn and it becomes a page worth reading: clean margins, real hierarchy, a comfortable line length, and type set the way a good book is. And it isn't only AI. Your notes, your READMEs, your documents — any .md file reads beautifully here. No editing chrome, no clutter, just the words. WHAT DAWN RENDERS • Full CommonMark and GitHub Flavored Markdown • Syntax-highlighted code blocks that collapse out of the way • Tables that scroll sideways instead of breaking • Math, written in LaTeX and set with KaTeX • Diagrams, drawn from Mermaid • Task lists, nested quotes, footnotes, and frontmatter — folded into a tidy Properties strip BUILT FOR READING • Pinch to size the text exactly how you like it • Light, dark, and automatic themes • An outline you can open to jump between headings • A slim progress line so you always know where you are • A measured column width that keeps long lines easy on the eyes YOUR FILES, YOUR WAY • Open Markdown straight from the Files app or iCloud Drive • Send a web link from Safari and Dawn fetches and renders it • Recent documents group themselves by Today, Yesterday, and This Week • Pin the ones you keep coming back to, and search across names and contents SHARE BEAUTIFULLY Select any passage and share it as plain text, as Markdown, or as a polished image card with syntax highlighting — ready for Messages, X, or anywhere else. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account, no sign-in, no tracking. Your files stay on your device, and nothing you read is sent anywhere. Everything renders on-device, so Dawn works with or without a connection. Requires iPhone with iOS 17 or later.

Marked is a Markdown reader and editor designed first as a reading app — think Apple Books for your .md files. Open any Markdown document from Files or iCloud Drive and read it with the calm of a book: classic typography, generous margins, justified text with automatic hyphenation, and Light, Sepia and Dark themes. A READING-FIRST EXPERIENCE • Three reading themes: Light, Sepia and Dark. • Nine curated typefaces: system serif, New York, Georgia, Palatino, Times New Roman, Helvetica Neue, Avenir Next, Iowan Old Style and Charter. • Adjustable font size, line spacing and horizontal margins. • Justified text with automatic hyphenation for a book-like rhythm. • Native rendering of headings, lists, quotes, code blocks, links and tables. • Styled blockquotes with accent bar, soft background tint and a decorative quote glyph. • Wrap-first tables that fit cell text to the screen and only scroll horizontally when wrapping is not enough. SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING • Fenced code blocks are highlighted with automatic language detection (highlight.js via HighlighterSwift). • The editor colours Markdown markup live — headings, emphasis, code spans, links and lists — without getting in the way of plain-text editing. QUICK EDITING • Built-in plain-text editor with in-place save to the original file. • New documents open straight into the editor. • Jump to any line directly from the table of contents or search results. • Debounced highlighting keeps large files responsive while typing. NAVIGATION • Auto-generated table of contents from the document's headings. • In-document search: per section in reader mode and per line in editor mode. • Recent files list with per-document reading position and progress, Apple Notes–style file count under the title. FAST AND SMOOTH • Documents open asynchronously so the UI never blocks on large files. • Theme and font changes reuse the parsed document and existing section views instead of rebuilding from scratch. • Smart subview reuse keeps scrolling fluid in long documents. WORKS WITH YOUR FILES • Opens .md, .markdown, .mdown and .mkd files from Files, iCloud Drive and "Open with…". • Create new Markdown documents from inside the app. • Security-scoped bookmarks remember where each file lives, so recents keep working after relaunch. PRIVACY BY DESIGN • Everything runs on your device. Marked has no servers. • No accounts, no telemetry, no advertising, no tracking. • Your files stay exactly where you keep them — the app only opens them. Ideal for reading notes, technical documentation, project READMEs, long-form articles or books written in Markdown — and for making quick edits without leaving the reading flow.