What OpenMarkdown touches on your machine

OpenMarkdown is a local Markdown editor. It should be trustworthy the way a plain-text file is trustworthy — so here is exactly what it touches, and what it leaves alone.

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Your files

Everything you write is plain Markdown, saved as .md in a folder you pick. No database, no proprietary format, no account. Uninstall OpenMarkdown and every file opens, unchanged, in any editor. Images you paste are saved in an attachments/ folder next to your note and linked with a relative path, so notes stay portable.

The network

The app has no AI inside it and sends no telemetry. The only thing it ever puts on the network is a check for a newer version — a request to the GitHub releases where OpenMarkdown is published, which, like any web request, lets that server see your IP. There is no account and no identifier. Your files, your keystrokes, and how you use the app never leave your machine.

Your shell (`$VISUAL`)

If you turn on the $VISUAL integration — so “edit in your editor,” including from your agent, opens OpenMarkdown — the app adds one clearly-marked block to your shell config:

# >>> OpenMarkdown VISUAL >>>
export VISUAL="openmd --wait --source claude"
# <<< OpenMarkdown VISUAL <<<

That is the whole change. Specifically:

It writes to ~/.zshrc, and to ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc only if you already have one — it never creates a shell file you didn’t have.
It only ever touches text between those two markers. Everything else in your config is preserved byte-for-byte.
Turning the integration off deletes the block and nothing else. A VISUAL= line you set yourself, outside the markers, is never touched.
The file is written atomically — a fresh file is renamed into place — so a crash mid-write can’t truncate your config, and your original permission bits are kept (a locked-down 600 file stays 600).

The source for this is a single small file. It’s closed today — but if you want to audit it, ask and I’ll send it over.

Default app

A button in Settings, off until you press it, registers OpenMarkdown as the macOS handler for .md and .markdown. That’s a system setting, not a change to your files.

Before taking over, it records the app that was default first. Revert puts that exact app back.

CLI `openmd`

A button in Settings, off until you press it, installs the openmd command. Nothing is downloaded — it’s a symlink to the openmd binary already inside the app, VS Code style, in /usr/local/bin or ~/.local/bin.

Uninstall removes that link, and only that link. Same rule as $VISUAL: OpenMarkdown only removes what it put there.

This website

This site counts page views with a privacy-friendly analytics tool: no cookies, no personal data, no consent banner — just aggregate views, referrer, and country. It runs only on the live site, so if you open these pages from a file the browser makes no external requests at all.

No warranty

OpenMarkdown is free to use. The app is closed-source and provided as-is, without warranty of any kind. You’re trusted to decide whether it fits your machine and your work.