FeatureFree

Write markdown. Click away. Read it.

Some items are a document rather than a bullet — a spec, a changelog entry, a briefing. Type /md and the item holds the whole thing, in markdown while you are editing it and rendered the moment you click away.

Two markdown blocks in one outline. The caret is in the first, so it shows its source; the second has been clicked away from, so it renders.

One item, two states

Click in and you get the raw markdown source, ready to edit. Click out and SpacebarX renders it in place. There is no preview pane, no second document and nothing to keep in sync — the item is both the source and the formatted view.

What a markdown block renders

  • Headings, # through ######
  • Bullet and numbered lists, including nested ones
  • Blockquotes
  • Fenced code blocks
  • Horizontal rules
  • SpacebarX’s own inline formatting: bold, italic, links, tags and the rest

Write a markdown block

  1. Type /md on the item that should hold the document

    It sits beside /code in the slash menu, under Basic blocks. The item stays where it is in the tree and keeps its children.

  2. Write markdown the way you would anywhere else

    Enter adds a line inside the block instead of starting a new item, so a heading, the paragraph under it and its list all live in the same item. Pasting a whole document keeps it intact rather than exploding it into bullets, and the paste is one undo step.

  3. Click away and read it

    The block renders: headings become headings, lists nest, quotes indent and fenced code sits in a code panel — with your bold, links and tags formatted the way they are everywhere else in the outline.

  4. Click back in to edit the source

    The rendered output swaps back to the markdown you wrote. Arrow keys move through its lines and only leave the block from the first and last one; Escape leaves the text for node selection.

Use markdown blocks for

  • A spec or brief that needs headings and lists, not a branch of bullets
  • Release notes drafted next to the work they describe
  • A meeting summary you want to read back rather than re-parse
  • A README or doc pasted in whole, kept readable

Formatting without leaving the outline

The rendering happens on your device — offline, like the rest of SpacebarX — and the output is sanitized before it is shown, so a pasted document cannot bring anything executable with it. The block is still an ordinary outline item: it moves, indents, collapses and mirrors like every other one.

Worth knowing

Use code blocks when a snippet should never render. A /code block stays raw and monospaced whether or not the caret is in it.

A markdown block is formatting inside SpacebarX, not a file format. There is no Markdown file import or export — outlines move in and out as OPML or JSON.

Keep the document inside the outline.

Type /md on any item, write the markdown, and click away to read it back formatted.