May 13, 2026
Notes app drama hits plain text
The Emacsification of Software
He got fed up with ugly notes apps, built his own, and the crowd went wild over DIY software
TLDR: A writer got so annoyed with bad Markdown readers that he used AI to make his own Mac app, and commenters instantly made it bigger than one app. Some hailed a future of custom-made personal tools, while others said it’s just the return of an old dream — with the usual mess, breakage, and nerd drama included.
A fed-up Mac user went looking for one simple thing: a pleasant app to read Markdown files — basically the plain-text format used for notes, docs, and code guides all over the internet. Instead, he found a mess of clunky apps, missing basics like search and even copy-paste, then did the most 2026 thing imaginable: had AI help him make his own. The result, MDV.app, is a custom viewer built mostly to save him from endless squinting at terminal windows and badly behaved apps. The original post is half software gripe, half victory lap, but in the comments, readers turned it into a full-on manifesto about making weird little tools just for yourself.
That’s where the real fireworks are. One camp was downright euphoric, calling this the age of “content creation for an audience of one” and celebrating disposable personal apps for tiny, almost absurdly specific needs. Another group said: hold on, this isn’t some shiny future — this was always the dream of home computing, and we’re only now stumbling back to it. Then came the Emacs veterans, who brought the trauma. While some praised customizable tools that can be bent to fit your brain, others warned that “personal software” can quickly become a cursed pile of brittle hacks that breaks across devices and ruins your weekend. And yes, the joke brigade showed up too, with one reader insisting the real missed opportunity was naming the trend “The Emacsulation of Software.” Honestly? That pun alone may outlive the app
Key Points
- •The article argues that existing terminal-based Markdown viewers are limited by monospaced terminal presentation, even when their feature sets are strong.
- •Graphical Markdown editors on macOS provide better reading experiences, but the author says they are unsuitable as simple viewers because they disrupt an editing workspace.
- •After trying dedicated Markdown viewers from the App Store and finding issues such as missing search and copy support, the author decided to build a custom app.
- •The author says MDV.app was brought to a viable state with about 30 minutes of interactive work after prior setup of Claude, Xcode, Git, and related skills.
- •MDV.app is described as supporting text selection and copying, fixed-string search, SQLite FTS indexing, bookmarks, table-of-contents navigation, saved reading position, themes, and improved typography.