Paragraph focus
Dim everything except the paragraph you’re writing. It follows your cursor as you type and never touches your text.
A native writing desk for Mac
Keep the whole story
close to the page.
Sable is a warm Markdown home for fiction. Draft in a focused page, keep characters and places nearby, and let every part of your story live in plain files you own.
- Free and open source
- Fiction Projects
- No account or lock-in
- Apple Silicon and Intel
Six quiet themes
What it does
A desk that belongs to the story.
The writing tools stay quiet until you ask for them. The details of a world are there when you need them and gone when you don’t.
A writing desk that behaves
Browse nested folders, drag files into place, color and pin what matters, rename, and search every subfolder. Switch files without leaving the window.
One home for the whole story
Start a Fiction Project and Sable makes a clear place for your manuscript, characters, locations, world notes, images, and loose thoughts. Every piece is still ordinary Markdown.
Your outline, your words
Headings become an outline you can name Chapters, Scenes, or Episodes. Jump anywhere with a click.
The reference you need, beside the draft
Open a character sheet or map next to your chapter in a clean reading view, then edit it in place when you need to.
Gentle prose suggestions
Light strikethroughs mark words you might cut. Sentence coloring shows nouns and verbs. Both run on your Mac and never edit a saved file.
A toolbar that gets out of the way
It slides in when you reach for it and disappears when you don’t. Put it on the top or the side, keep it visible, or turn it off.
Fiction Projects
A world can stay within reach.
Give a novel its own place without putting it in a database. Sable builds the folders, then keeps each scene, card, and note as a file you can open anywhere.
- Cards with a point of view. Characters, locations, and world notes can float beside the page, pin open, collapse to a tab, and hold a portrait.
- Scene tags that stay quiet. Tag the people and places in a chapter. Their chips appear while you write and open the right card with a click.
- A manuscript at a glance. Set a word goal, see chapter lengths, and rearrange chapters without changing their names or Markdown.
Chapter 2 — The Crossing
Chapter 2
The harbor bell rang twice before dawn. Marren pulled her coat tight and walked down toward the water.
Somewhere in the fog, a voice was counting.
⌖ Harbor◌ MarrenTag this scene
No lock-in
Your writing is just files.
Sable saves ordinary Markdown. Open your chapters in any editor, keep them in a folder you control, and take them anywhere.
- Plain text. Bold, italics, headings, notes, and tags are ordinary Markdown marks. Nothing proprietary, nothing hidden.
- Your cloud, your rules. Keep the folder in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive and your service handles sync.
- Display only. Themes, focus, colors and suggestions never change what’s saved.
# Chapter 2
The harbor bell rang **twice** before dawn,
which meant someone had lied about
the *tide*.
> Counting was how the harbor kept
> its dead.
- Marren
- The pier
The harbor bell rang **twice** before dawn,
which meant someone had lied about
the *tide*.
> Counting was how the harbor kept
> its dead.
- Marren
- The pier
At a glance
The details
- Price
- Free
- License
- MIT, open source
- Platform
- macOS 14 or later
- Processors
- Apple Silicon and Intel
- Files
- .md, .markdown, .txt
- Updates
- Built in, signed
What’s next
Built to grow with the work.
Fiction Projects are here. These next steps will keep Sable warm, local, and easy to leave with your files.
Fiction Projects
Create a story folder with a manuscript, characters, locations, world notes, images, and cards you can keep beside the page.
PDF and ebook export
Export a manuscript with a preview and explicit settings.
iPad
The core is written to be reused, so an iPad edition is possible later.
Get Sable
Free for Mac. Open source, MIT licensed.
Download the latest release from GitHub. It works on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs running macOS 14 or later.
Download and unzip
Get Sable-Markdown-Writer.zip from the latest release and double-click it.
Move to Applications
Drag Sable Markdown Writer.app into your Applications folder.
Open it
Choose a writing folder when asked, or create a new one. Then start on page one. The guide covers shortcuts and tips.
A note on first launch. Sable isn’t notarized by Apple yet, so macOS may block it the first time. If you trust the download, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway. Updates later arrive inside the app, verified with the project’s signing key.
Questions
Good to know
Is Sable really free?
Yes. Sable is open source under the MIT license, with no account, subscription, or paid tier.
Is Sable a good Markdown editor for writing a novel?
It is built for exactly that. Fiction Projects give a story its own manuscript, characters, locations, world notes, images, and cards. Your headings become a chapter outline, paragraph focus keeps you inside one passage, and every chapter stays an ordinary Markdown file.
Does it sync between devices?
Sable does not run a cloud service. Keep your writing folder in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive and that service syncs the files. Let it finish syncing before you edit the same file elsewhere.
Does Sable use AI?
No. Prose suggestions come from a word list you control, and sentence coloring uses Apple’s Natural Language tools on your Mac. Nothing you write is sent anywhere.
What files can it open?
Markdown and text files: .md, .markdown, and .txt. Files stay exactly as you wrote them.
Can I keep using other apps on the same files?
Yes. Sable saves plain Markdown in ordinary folders, so any other editor can open the same files. Themes, focus, colors, and suggestions are display only and never change what is saved.
Is there a Windows, iPad, or iPhone version?
Sable is Mac-only for now. An iPad edition and PDF and ebook export are on the roadmap.
Why does macOS say I have to choose Open Anyway?
The app is signed for updates but not notarized by Apple, which needs a paid developer membership. It is a one-time approval in System Settings, Privacy & Security, and you can read every line of the source.