Getting Started

Pourdown is a free, offline, open-source desktop Markdown editor. It's built with Tauri v2, so it ships as a small native app for macOS and Windows — no browser, no account, no telemetry.

Install

Download the installer for your platform from the latest release.

macOS (.dmg)

macOS builds are signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, so installing is the normal drag-and-drop flow:

1. Open the downloaded .dmg (choose the aarch64 build for Apple Silicon, x64 for Intel).
2. Drag Pourdown into Applications.
3. Launch it from Applications or Spotlight — no extra steps.

Windows (.msi or .exe)

Open PowerShell in the folder containing the installer, then:

# Remove Mark-of-the-Web and install in one step
Get-ChildItem Pourdown_*_x64_en-US.msi | Unblock-File
msiexec /i (Get-ChildItem Pourdown_*_x64_en-US.msi).FullName

For .exe installers, Windows SmartScreen may still require a one-time manual "More info" → "Run anyway".

Staying up to date

Pourdown checks for updates automatically on launch and notifies you if a new version is available — you can also trigger a check any time from Help → Check for Updates…. Turn the automatic check off in Preferences → General if you'd rather update manually.

Your first import

1. Launch Pourdown.
2. File → Import, then choose a Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx/.xls/.ods), PDF, or PowerPoint (.pptx) file.
3. The file opens immediately as a new Markdown document — headings, lists, tables, links, and embedded images are converted automatically. See Importing Documents for exactly what's preserved per format.
4. Edit visually (the default WYSIWYG view) or toggle to raw Source mode with the toolbar button — see Editing.
5. Save with Cmd/Ctrl+S. On first save, any extracted images move from a temporary imports/ folder into a <name>.assets/ folder next to your .md file, so the document stays portable.

Building from source

If you'd rather build Pourdown yourself (or want to contribute — see CONTRIBUTING.md):

Prerequisites: Node.js v20+, pnpm, Rust (for the Tauri desktop build).

git clone https://github.com/passpier/Pourdown.git
cd Pourdown
pnpm install

pnpm dev          # frontend only, via Vite
pnpm tauri dev    # full desktop app with hot reload

pnpm build        # production frontend build (tsc && vite build)
pnpm tauri build  # production desktop application