Lettera Beta is here!

Announcement
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Hey everyone! Today is a day we have been quietly looking forward to for a while, and we are thrilled to finally say it out loud: Lettera beta is officially here! :tada:

Lettera started its life as Panda, the code name for the new editor we built for Bear 2.0. During that process, so many of you asked whether this editor could live on its own as a standalone app. So here we are.

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What is Lettera

Lettera is a native, refined Markdown editor for macOS. Built for writers, researchers, developers, and anyone who works with documents, from a quick blog draft to a complete technical documentation system.

Lettera works around your setup. Open a single file to read and edit it, or open a folder as your writing workspace:

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:file_folder: Folder as workspace Lettera opens your iCloud Lettera folder by default. To work with your own folders, go to File > Open… or drag any folder from Finder onto Lettera in the Dock. Your full folder structure appears in the Sidebar, exactly as it lives on your Mac. Click any Markdown file to open it in the editor and start editing.

:page_facing_up: Single file editor You can open any Markdown file directly on your Mac in Lettera with editor-only view to get straight to work.

What Lettera can do

  • Write in WYSIWYG Markdown Lettera follows the CommonMark standard with live rendering. Markdown syntax hides when you are not editing, so you can write and preview in one place. A BIU formatting bar is also available for quick styling
  • Format with rich styles, tables, quotes, lists, code blocks, inline images and attachments, Math formula with Mathjax, and more
  • Share and export Copy your writing as plain text, rich text, Markdown, or HTML. Export to PDF, JPG, ePub, and more when it is time to send your work somewhere
  • Manage files and folders directly from the Sidebar without leaving the app. Open files in tabs to work across multiple documents in one place. Image files can be previewed right inside the editor
  • Table of Contents Navigate your document with a full outline, and jump to any section in one click

How to get it

You can download Lettera Beta through TestFlight here.

Feedback welcome!

All these features need lots of testing, and we would love your help. You can start by editing this file, or create a new one by clicking :plus: in the Sidebar. You can also open any folder you are already working on, click any Markdown file, and pick up right where you left off.

Tell us what felt right and what did not. Every piece of feedback goes directly to the people building this. Head to the Lettera feedback category to report bugs and share your thoughts, we’d love to hear from you!

Thank you!

Thank you so much for being part of this, and we can’t wait to hear what you think. We hope Lettera brings a little more warmth and ease into your everyday writing, and we are grateful to be building it together with you.

Your writing starts with Lettera.

The Lettera Team

:link: Lettera Official Website
:speech_balloon: Bug Report & Feedback
:e_mail: Sign up Newsletter

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Panda Sneak Peek: A Work-in-Progress Markdown Editor and Library 🐼
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I’m so excited! :smiley: :smiley:

Bummer it doesn’t work for those of us who are skipping Tahoe, though :frowning:

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So cool to see, congratulations on the launch, I’ve been using and loving Panda since it came out. Will the Tahoe requirement be an indefinite thing, or just for the testing phase? Excited to see this anyway and good luck!

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Ok, now I have a reason to leave sequoia before golden gate arrives :sweat_smile:

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OH MY GOODNESS! And yes, all caps is warranted :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: . Just yesterday I spent so much time testing various apps and they all fell short in one (or more ways) than the other. Bear is supreme. I reopened Panda again thinking: if only it were a little further along, I could use it.

This could not have happened at a more opportune time. Just crazy. Thank you. :folded_hands:t4:

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Exciting!

Doesn’t look like the website (lettera.md) linked in the OP post is live yet.

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Woohoo! Downloaded, running, and monkeying around! Thank you!

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Prepare for a deluge of requests to make it more like Obsidian. And a few "What about Windows/Android?'s" in the mix. :joy:

This looks great so far, and honestly fills the gap I had with Bear for work. I run Bear on my personal devices synced, and Bear local only on my work computer to keep data separate. It’s worked well, but I’m going to be rethinking that with Lettera.

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So the main difference between this and Bear is local files and just one document?

Can someone explain that to me? I am not seeing the vision for this and just very curious because I do love Bear.

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Excellent job developers. Panda and now Lettera has become the place where I pen almost all my emails before sending them and just about any draft before it has to go into Google Docs or Word. Your products are simply quality-driven and I look forward to testing Lettera. Thank you!

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Personally I’m curious about having Lettera and Obsidian share a vault folder. That way, normal use can be in Lettera with its far superior editor and native Mac goodness, but when you need to dip into Obsidian for some special feature (Bases, block/table embeds, etc.) you can.

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That’s the first thing I did with Lettera was open my Obsidian vault. Worked perfectly, except for those more specialized features as you mentioned. I really like the ability work with a folder markdown in a variety of ways.

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I’m confused as to how that would work when opening the doc back in Lettera. I think the focus should be on simply getting the app to 1.0, not integrations outside of itself.

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This was exactly my plan as well. I hope they work well together.

This is good to hear. Do the obsidian wiki links work in Lettera? And do locally stored images (./images) show in notes? I would try but have not upgraded to Tahoe yet. This will probably be the reason I finally upgrade.

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I like the idea of a simple .md file editor and the clean design. I was just wondering if this is going to be a single-file editor, do you plan to implement wiki links?

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Panda, the predecessor to Lettera, was already a single-file editor. Lettera is no different in that regard: unlike Bear it works with local files rather than a database. The shiny new thing is that it now has a sidebar that displays the entire content of a folder.

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Out of curiosity (and I really mean that, this isn’t a snarky or angry comment) – it seems Panda/Lettera is simply the existing Bear 2.0 editor that’s been out for nearly 3 years now, with a file-based note management system. Why has it taken 3 years just to develop a file-based system for an already existing editor?

Even with two different systems behind it – 1) folder as workspace and 2) single file editor, and even with extremely detailed and thoughtful developers doing the work – 3 years still seems really excessive. Again, not an angry comment, just a question.

Regardless, I’m really excited for this, it looks great and seems like it’s been very thoughtfully integrated.

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So, the wikilinks do not work, but links using Common Markdown do.

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It actually didn’t :slightly_smiling_face:

We paused work on Panda as soon as Bear 2 shipped, something we communicated at the time. Development only restarted at the beginning of this year, when @ctietze joined the team. So the timeline is much shorter than it looks from the outside.

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