A tiny, beautiful text editor for macOS.
~— home, plain text, and nothing more than you need.
The way software is built has changed. With AI-assisted development, you read and edit code by hand far less often — so reaching for a full IDE just to glance at a single .txt or .md file feels like too much.
Tilde fills that gap. It's an ultra-lightweight text editor for macOS built around one idea: open the file, read it, maybe change a line, and close it. No projects, no workspaces, no plugins, no terminals, no sidebars.
The goal isn't a smaller IDE. The goal is for the editor to disappear so the content is all that's left.
- Instant — Double-click a file and it opens almost immediately.
- Quiet — The interface never draws more attention than the content.
- Native — It behaves like a built-in macOS app.
- Beautiful — Reading text is a pleasure in itself.
- Disposable — There is almost nothing to configure or manage.
Tilde is for people who want to quickly read or lightly edit plain-text files:
- Developers who work with AI and spend less time in code editors
- People who frequently read Markdown documents
- Anyone who wants to inspect a README, note, or config file without launching a heavy editor
It is not an IDE, a project workspace, a note database, or a Markdown authoring suite. If you need Git integration, plugins, or multi-file navigation, Tilde is intentionally the wrong tool.
- Native macOS document-based app (one file → one window)
- Open, edit, and save
.txt,.md, and.markdownfiles - Opens most UTF-based plain-text files (
.json,.yaml,.toml,.xml,.csv,.log,.env, and more) as plain text - Lightweight Markdown styling that keeps syntax visible while improving readability
- Reader mode (
⌘⇧R) — a fully rendered, read-only view of a Markdown document, with tables, highlighted code blocks, and YAML frontmatter as a quiet header (title:on top, the other keys as rows);#fragmentlinks jump within the document and web links open in your browser. Links and images pointing at neighboring local files work when macOS grants file access — the App Sandbox can block files that live next to the document (a blocked image shows its alt text; a blocked link does nothing). Toggle it from the title bar, just like Safari's Reader - Quiet syntax highlighting for config files: keys tinted in
.json,.yaml, and.toml, everything else left alone - Standard editing: undo/redo, cut/copy/paste, drag-and-drop, spell check, Find & Replace
- Word wrap (on by default) and optional line numbers
- Light / Dark / System appearance using macOS semantic colors
- Interface in English, Korean, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese, following your macOS language
- Fast launch and near-zero idle resource usage
- Full macOS integration: Open With, file associations, Recent Documents, Autosave, Versions, Full Screen, window tabs
For Markdown files, Tilde applies gentle semantic styling. A heading's # stays visible while the text renders slightly larger; **bold** keeps its markers while the enclosed text can render in bold. The aim is not to hide Markdown, but to make it easier to read.
Styled elements: headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code, code blocks, blockquotes, links, bullet lists, numbered lists, and horizontal rules. A leading YAML frontmatter block stays dim and plain, with no Markdown styling inside.
Tilde follows macOS conventions.
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| New | ⌘N |
| Open | ⌘O |
| Save | ⌘S |
| Save As | ⌘⇧S |
| Close | ⌘W |
| Find | ⌘F |
| Find Next | ⌘G |
| Find Previous | ⌘⇧G |
| Find & Replace | ⌥⌘F |
| Reader | ⌘⇧R |
| Preferences | ⌘, |
| Increase Font | ⌘+ |
| Decrease Font | ⌘- |
| Reset Font | ⌘0 |
Tilde processes every document locally.
- No server uploads
- No account or sign-in
- No cloud storage
- No AI features
- No analytics in the initial release
Full policy: PRIVACY.md
Tilde is built with Swift, SwiftUI, and AppKit, using SwiftUI as the primary technology and wrapping NSTextView where a mature text engine is needed.
Requirements:
- macOS
- Xcode
To build and run:
open Tilde.xcodeprojThen build and run from Xcode (⌘R).
Tilde deliberately leaves out anything that would turn it back into a full IDE:
- Terminal, Git, debugger, build/run, LSP, IntelliSense, refactoring, project explorer
- Extensions, plugins, marketplaces
- Note databases, tags, backlinks, vaults, wikis, sync
- Accounts, comments, shared workspaces, real-time collaboration
- AI completion, chat, rewrite, or agents
For the full product thinking behind these decisions, see docs/PRODUCT.md.
Tilde is released under the MIT License.
Just open the file.