abstract

A minimal, local-first markdown notes editor — GPU-rendered with GPUI.

Your notes are plain .md files living in real folders on disk. No accounts, no sync daemon, no proprietary format — the folder is the app.

Features

• Live markdown — Typora-style rendering powered by tree-sitter: bold, italic, ==highlights==, %%comments%%, code, links, headings, lists, tasks, > [!note] callouts and [^1] footnotes render inline, and the syntax conceals itself until your selection touches it.
• Autosave — writes are debounced as you type; a note's file is created on the first keystroke and named after its first heading.
• Spaces — keep several note directories and switch between them from the sidebar.
• Sidebar tree — folders and notes with inline rename, drag-and-drop moves and a right-click menu, plus one-click new note / new folder.
• Images and attachments — paste or drop images onto a note: they are copied to attachments/ and render inline, as do hand-written ![](…) / ![[…]] images. Other dropped files become links ([[note]] for notes in the space).
• Context menus — right-click in the editor for clipboard, links, formatting, paragraph styles and inserts.
• Task lists — click the checkbox to toggle; code blocks with syntax highlighting.
• Wiki-links — [[note]] links with autocomplete; Ctrl/Cmd+click follows a link (creating the note if missing), and a backlinks panel lists references.
• Global search — Ctrl/Cmd+P opens a palette over note titles and bodies; empty query lists recently edited notes.
• External-edit aware — the space folder is watched live (inotify/FSEvents/ReadDirectoryChanges), so edits and deletions from other apps show up instantly.
• Session restore — reopens your notes, window geometry and sidebar state.
• Cross-platform — Linux (Wayland & X11), macOS and Windows; bundled Noto fonts for consistent rendering.
• Interface in English and Portuguese — auto-detected from the system locale.
• Chromeless — custom titlebar, light and dark themes (Abstract, Paper, Sepia, Solarized, Midnight, Nord), first-run tour.

Install

Releases

Prebuilt artifacts are attached to each GitHub Release:

• Linux — abstract-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (binary + docs), a .deb, an .rpm, and an .AppImage. aarch64 builds are available as abstract-<version>-linux-aarch64.*.
• macOS — abstract-<version>-macos-aarch64.dmg (Apple Silicon) / ...-macos-x86_64.dmg (Intel): open and drag abstract.app to Applications. A bare .app.zip is also attached. Builds are ad-hoc signed (no Apple Developer ID), so Gatekeeper blocks the first launch: right-click → Open, or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/abstract.app.
• Windows — abstract-<version>-windows-x86_64.exe (portable, just run it) or the .zip with README/LICENSE. SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher: More info → Run anyway.

Updates

Once a day abstract checks GitHub for a newer release. Turn this off with Check for updates in the spaces menu. The AppImage, the macOS .app, the Windows .exe and the Linux tarball can update themselves. The download is only installed if SHA256SUMS carries a valid minisign signature and the file matches its checksum. .deb, .rpm, AUR and Homebrew installs just get a notice, so update them with your package manager.

Arch / CachyOS (AUR)

Once published to the AUR (PKGBUILDs in packaging/aur/):

paru -S abstract-editor      # build from source
paru -S abstract-editor-bin  # prebuilt binary

Debian / Ubuntu

Download the .deb from the latest release, then:

sudo dpkg -i abstract-editor_<version>-1_amd64.deb

Fedora / RHEL

Download the .rpm from the latest release, then:

sudo dnf install ./abstract-editor-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm

AppImage

chmod +x abstract-<version>-linux-x86_64.AppImage
./abstract-<version>-linux-x86_64.AppImage

From source

Rust toolchain is pinned via rust-toolchain.toml (rustup handles it automatically).

• macOS — xcode-select --install
• Arch —

  sudo pacman -S --needed rustup base-devel pkgconf libxkbcommon libxkbcommon-x11 \
    libxcb xcb-util-wm xcb-util-image xcb-util-keysyms xcb-util-renderutil \
    wayland alsa-lib fontconfig

• Debian/Ubuntu —

  sudo apt-get install libxcb-xkb-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev \
    libxcb-icccm4-dev libxcb-image0-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev \
    libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxcb-keysyms1-dev libwayland-dev pkg-config

• Windows — rustup + Visual Studio Build Tools ("Desktop development with C++" workload).

Then:

cargo build --release
./target/release/abstract   # abstract.exe on Windows

Keyboard

Ctrl on Linux/Windows, Cmd on macOS. Standard editing keys plus B/I/Z/Shift+Z and word jumps (Ctrl+←/→, Alt+←/→ on macOS).

Action	Linux / Windows	macOS
New note	Ctrl+N	Cmd+N
New folder	Ctrl+Shift+N	Cmd+Shift+N
Switch space	Ctrl+O	Cmd+O
Save now	Ctrl+S	Cmd+S
Cycle theme	Ctrl+Shift+L	Cmd+Shift+L
Settings	Ctrl+,	Cmd+,
Toggle sidebar	Ctrl+\	Cmd+\
Delete note	Ctrl+Shift+Backspace	Cmd+Shift+Backspace
Search notes	Ctrl+P or Ctrl+Shift+F	Cmd+P or Cmd+Shift+F
Find in note	Ctrl+F	Cmd+F
Replace in note	Ctrl+H	Cmd+Alt+F
Next / previous match	F3 / Shift+F3	Cmd+G / Cmd+Shift+G
Move line(s) up / down	Alt+↑ / Alt+↓	Alt+↑ / Alt+↓
Duplicate line(s)	Ctrl+Shift+D	Cmd+Shift+D
Select next occurrence	Ctrl+D	Cmd+D
Rename	F2	F2
Tour	F1	F1
Quit	—	Cmd+Q

Tour navigation: Enter/→ next, ← back, Esc skip.

Find bar: Enter/Shift+Enter step through matches. In the replace field Enter replaces the active match and Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter) replaces all of them as one undo step. Esc closes.

Tables render as a grid; with the caret inside one (or with Settings > Raw tables on) you edit its Markdown source. In a table, Tab / Shift+Tab realign the columns and move to the next / previous cell; Tab in the last cell adds a row.

Development

cargo fmt --check
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo test
cargo build --release

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE. Bundled Noto Sans / Noto Sans Mono fonts are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 — see assets/fonts/OFL.txt. Bundled Hunspell dictionaries: en_US under MIT AND BSD, pt_BR under LGPL-3.0 OR MPL-2.0 (distributed under MPL-2.0) — see assets/dict/.