The beautiful, private way to read AI answers, READMEs and Markdown on Android and Mac. No ads, no account.
The same calm reading and the same privacy. Pick your device.
AI answers are Markdown – save a ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini reply as a file and PilcrowMD renders it as a clean document, not a wall of raw symbols.
README files and docs read the way they do on the web – syntax-highlighted code, tables, and task lists all intact.
Technical specs and notes become real documents – premium serif type, generous spacing, and a warm theme tuned for long reading.
Long-form Markdown stays navigable with an auto table of contents, in-document search, and per-file scroll memory.
PilcrowMD renders Markdown the way it was meant to look – premium serif type, a warm low-contrast dark theme, and layout tuned for real reading, not a cramped IDE.
Switch between a clean rendered preview and a real source editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers, and undo/redo.
Saving writes back exactly what you wrote – no silent reformatting and no half-written files. Your file is safe.
Full CommonMark and GitHub Flavored Markdown – tables, task lists, strikethrough, and links – plus the things most readers get wrong. Each of these is a real part of the render path – native, on your device, with one exception noted below:
PilcrowMD typesets LaTeX math on your device – no internet and no external
service. Write $$…$$ and it renders as a proper display
equation, right on the page.
Since version 1.0.15, Mermaid diagrams are drawn on your phone, offline. The app has no internet permission.
Fenced code blocks are syntax-highlighted across many programming languages. Long lines scroll sideways so the page never breaks.
YAML front matter at the top of a file is recognized and shown as a clean field list – not dumped as a wall of raw text before your content.
The Android app draws text with native Android views, with no browser engine, so it stays fast and private. Diagrams are drawn in one hidden, offline web view. The Mac app draws its pages natively too. Mermaid diagrams are drawn in one hidden web view, with all network blocked.
Built for the two kinds of Markdown people deal with daily: output from AI assistants, and README files, specs, and technical docs. Save an answer as Markdown and read it perfectly – not as raw symbols.
In-document search with highlighted matches, an auto-generated table of
contents, and per-file scroll memory. Open .md straight
from your file manager or another app.
PilcrowMD for Android is a native Android app – not a web page in a wrapper. The rendering, editing, and reliability work all happen on your device.
PilcrowMD is built in 100% Kotlin with Jetpack Compose, rendering text natively rather than through a browser engine. Only Mermaid diagrams use one hidden, offline web view. That keeps reading fast and fully on-device, with nothing routed through a remote service.
The app follows Clean Architecture with MVVM and a unidirectional data flow, which keeps the reading and editing paths predictable and testable.
The reliability story is the part we are proudest of: edits are committed with atomic saves backed by a write-ahead journal. A save either lands completely or not at all – so you never get a truncated or half-written file, even if the app is interrupted mid-write.
PilcrowMD for Mac is a separate native Mac app, written in Swift. Details on the Mac page.
PilcrowMD is built to earn your trust by collecting nothing. It renders your Markdown on your device, with no servers in the loop and nothing about your documents leaving your phone.
The app:
It works offline. Since version 1.0.15, Mermaid diagrams are drawn on your phone, offline. The app has no internet permission.
The Android app is open source (GPL-3.0). You can inspect exactly how it handles your data, build it yourself, or fork it. It is also in the official F-Droid repository, built from source by F-Droid rather than uploaded by us.
One person writes and maintains it, and for now it takes no outside code – but bug reports and feature ideas are genuinely wanted, and CONTRIBUTING.md is where to send them.
Read the full privacy policy →
PilcrowMD for Mac is built the same way: it collects nothing. It opens your files and writes them back. It keeps no separate copy and uploads nothing.
The app:
It works offline and makes no internet connection at all. Mermaid diagrams are drawn on your Mac. Web images in your notes are never fetched.
It reads and writes only the files and folders you open or add. It never overwrites another app's changes without asking first.
One person writes and maintains the app, and it accepts no outside code. Bug reports and ideas are welcome: report them on GitHub
PilcrowMD is a native Android Markdown reader and editor. It opens .md, .markdown, and .txt files and renders them with clean serif typography and a warm dark theme – built for AI output, README files, and technical docs.
Yes. PilcrowMD is completely free, with no ads and no in-app purchases.
Yes. PilcrowMD renders your documents on-device and needs no internet connection. Since version 1.0.15, Mermaid diagrams are drawn on your phone, offline. The app has no internet permission.
No. PilcrowMD has no accounts, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking. Your files and settings stay on your device. See the privacy policy at https://pilcrowmd.com/privacy for details.
Yes. PilcrowMD includes a real source editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers, and undo/redo. Saving writes back exactly what you wrote, with no silent reformatting and no half-written files.
PilcrowMD supports CommonMark and GitHub Flavored Markdown, including tables, task lists, strikethrough, syntax-highlighted code blocks, LaTeX math, and YAML front matter.
Yes. PilcrowMD renders LaTeX math natively on your device, with no internet connection required. Use $$…$$ delimiters to typeset display equations.
Yes. Since version 1.0.15, Mermaid diagrams are drawn on your phone, offline. The app has no internet permission. Tap a diagram to see it full screen. Search skips the text inside diagrams.
Yes, the Android app is. It is open-source software licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later.
Yes. PilcrowMD is in the official F-Droid repository, where F-Droid's own build system compiles the app from source and checks the result against the binary we publish. F-Droid's copy can be a version behind the Google Play copy, because their builds run on their own schedule.
PilcrowMD runs on Android 8.0 (Oreo) and newer.
Android app: free and open source. No ads, no account, no tracking.
Mac app: beta, free to use while the beta lasts.