Zettlr is a free, open-source desktop application for writing and organising text in Markdown. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Rather than being a typical word-processor, it focuses on managing files/folders of Markdown notes, linking between them (Zettelkasten style), integrating citations, and exporting to various formats suitable for publication.
If you’re a writer, researcher, student or author working with many notes, references and documents rather than one long text, Zettlr brings together note-management, citation support and export flexibility in one tool. It helps you:
- Keep your writing and notes under your control (files stay on your machine, no forced cloud).
- Link and organise ideas (better than a flat set of documents).
- Export to multiple formats (PDF, DOCX, LaTeX via Pandoc) for various publication or submission pipelines.
Install Zettlr on your computer. Point it at a folder (or workspace) which contains Markdown (.md) files. You write and edit those files using Zettlr’s editor, which supports Markdown, split-view, themes, internal linking, tagging, full-text search.
You can integrate with reference management (e.g., BibTeX / CSL JSON) to insert citations, manage bibliographies.
When ready, you can export your notes/chapters/projects into formats like PDF, Word, HTML—using Pandoc under the hood.
