Omawrite on Omarchy

Omawrite on Omarchy: the distraction-free Markdown editor

Omawrite is a dead-simple, free, open-source Markdown editor built for Omarchy — open it, write, and the syntax stays out of your way.

TL;DR install

omarchy pkg add omawrite

Already installed? It ships by default with Omarchy 4.0 “Quattro” and newer. Launch with omawrite from the terminal or find “Omawrite” in the app launcher.

Getting started in 5 minutes

1. First launch

Omawrite opens to a blank document with zero chrome — no toolbar, no sidebar, no panels. The only visible furniture is a thin footer strip with a font button, word count, and save/open buttons. It’s designed to disappear.

2. The 3 things you need to know

• Open and write. Ctrl+O opens a .md file through the native file picker; just start typing in the blank window for a new draft. Ctrl+S saves (a portal picker asks where the first time); Ctrl+Shift+S saves a copy. Ctrl+N opens a second window. Markdown markers stay visible but dim as you type — # headings stay readable but don’t shout, inline **bold** markers collapse so you’re looking at words, not syntax. This is not WYSIWYG (more on that in the Typora comparison below).
• Find and replace. Ctrl+F searches; hit Enter (or Ctrl+G) for the next match, Shift+Enter for the previous. Ctrl+H opens find-and-replace. Power-user extras: Ctrl+B/Ctrl+I/Ctrl+K wrap a selection in bold, italic, or link Markdown; Super+F toggles fullscreen; Ctrl+? shows the full shortcut reference.
• Where your drafts live. Unsaved drafts are recovered automatically after a crash — one of the app’s headline features. Omawrite also watches open files and warns you before an external edit can clobber your unsaved work (a real lifesaver if you edit the same file in nvim and Omawrite at once).

3. Config location

Settings (writing font choice, window geometry) live under Qt’s standard user config path — check ~/.config/ for the omawrite directory after your first launch. The font button in the footer lets you pick any installed font; IBM Plex Mono is the bundled default, and the app remembers your choice. Text size follows the desktop text size (omarchy display text size), re-flowing live without a restart.

Common issues & fixes

Real reports from the Omawrite GitHub issue tracker — paraphrased, with links. This is a young, actively-maintained project; check issue status before acting.

No scrollbar feedback when navigating with the keyboard

Fix: Page Up/Down, Home/End, Ctrl+Home/End move the viewport but the scrollbar stays invisible. Fixed upstream in PR #55 — update to the latest package and the bar now fades in on keyboard navigation, same as mouse scrolling. (Issue #54)

Editor text renders noticeably larger than the rest of the system

Fix: This is an open feature request asking for a persisted, app-specific relative zoom (e.g. a 0.9× scale factor or zoom shortcuts). Tracked in issue #27; related PRs #21 and #25 propose zoom controls that may resolve it. Until then, the practical workaround is choosing a more compact writing font via the footer button. Honest framing: if text size feels off, it’s the app, not your eyes.

Touchpad scrolling has no momentum

Fix: Lift your fingers mid-flick and the document stops dead, unlike browsers and GTK apps. Open issue as of writing, no fix landed — the reporter (Hyprland/Wayland, Qt 6.11.2) confirmed the Qt Quick QT_QUICK_FLICKABLE_WHEEL_DECELERATION env var has no effect. No user-side workaround yet — use Page Down / Ctrl+End for long jumps. (Issue #53)

Inline code spans get emphasis applied inside them

Fix: Typing `The_brown_fox` renders “brown” in italics, `foo**bar**baz` bolds “bar”, even though backticks should make everything inert. Open issue, tracked at #47. Workaround: avoid _ and * inside backtick spans if the misrendering bothers you.

The editor column is capped at roughly 65 characters (feature request)

Fix: Word wrap is always on, leaving wide windows mostly empty with no way to disable wrapping. Proposed behavior — full-width editing with a Ctrl+Shift+W wrap toggle — is under discussion in issue #91 (see also #24). If you write long lines (logs, tables), this is the issue to watch.

Pairs well with / If you hate this, try

Pairs well with

• Pandoc (pandoc.org) for the exports Omawrite doesn’t do (pandoc notes.md -o notes.pdf). omacut when your notes turn into a video script. ripgrep (rg "search term" ~/notes) for searching a folder of drafts Omawrite can’t see.

If you hate this, try

• MarkText — free, true WYSIWYG Markdown editing with a more conventional editor feel. Obsidian — free, and if you want backlinks, a graph, and a plugin ecosystem instead of minimalism.

Comparison: Omawrite vs Typora vs Obsidian vs MarkText

One-line verdict: If you want the cleanest possible place to put words down and never think about export pipelines, Omawrite is the one — and it’s already on your machine.

How to switch from Typora (~15 minutes)

1. Your files transfer natively. It’s just .md files — open them in Omawrite with Ctrl+O. No conversion step exists or is needed.
2. What doesn’t transfer: Typora themes (Omawrite follows the system theme, no theme engine), snippets, and any Typora-specific export settings.
3. Exports: install Pandoc once (omarchy pkg add pandoc) and pandoc draft.md -o draft.docx replaces Typora’s export menu for the formats most people need.
4. Time estimate: under 15 minutes for a typical notes folder — open, glance, write. The only real adjustment is the syntax-dimming vs. full-WYSIWYG difference, which most people stop noticing within a day.