TenLing is a calm desktop app for writing, reading, and presenting Markdown. The bet behind it is simple: your files stay plain .md, so they outlive any app — open them anywhere, forever.

Why it exists

Most Markdown tools force a choice: a heavy knowledge base, a split source/preview pane, or a paid single-purpose editor. TenLing is for people who just want to open a file and write. What you see is what you write — headings, lists, tasks, and tables format in place, without syntax staring back at you. And there is no vault: your files live in your folder, portable and plain.

What it does

Write — a quiet editor that stays out of the way, in light and dark. Bold, italic, headings, lists, tasks, quotes, code, tables, images, and links, from the toolbar or the usual shortcuts.
Slash commands — type / for a Notion-style menu of blocks: headings, lists, tables, and more.
Read — rendered preview for when you’re consuming, not composing.
Present — a Markdown file becomes slides: H1 and H2 headings split the deck. The deck is the document, so there is no separate file to maintain.
Outline & files — jump between sections from the outline; open a folder and browse the Markdown nearby.
Find & replace — search the open document with ⌘F / Ctrl+F.
Export — save as HTML or PDF, or copy as HTML for pasting elsewhere.
Light & dark — follows the system appearance, or pick a side yourself.
Auto-updates — new versions arrive signed from GitHub Releases.

Install

One-liners:

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SihanTeng/tenling/main/install.sh | bash

# Windows
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SihanTeng/tenling/main/install.ps1 | iex

Or through a package manager: Homebrew on macOS via its own tap (homebrew-tenling) — brew tap SihanTeng/tenling && brew install --cask tenling — plus APT and DNF repositories, the AUR (tenling-bin), and Chocolatey on Windows. Manual installers (DMG, AppImage, deb, rpm, MSI) are on the releases page.

Shortcuts

Action	macOS	Windows / Linux
New document	`⌘N`	`Ctrl+N`
Open	`⌘O`	`Ctrl+O`
Save	`⌘S`	`Ctrl+S`
Save as	`⌘⇧S`	`Ctrl+Shift+S`
Find	`⌘F`	`Ctrl+F`
Present	`⌘⇧P`	`Ctrl+Shift+P`
Exit present	`Esc`	`Esc`
Next / previous slide	`→` / `←` or `Space`	same

Under the hood

TenLing is a Tauri app — a small Rust shell around the system web view, so it stays light instead of shipping a whole browser. The editor is TipTap on React, with marked and turndown doing the Markdown round-trip to and from disk; slides in present mode are rendered with Remotion. Releases, installers, and update signatures are built in CI and published on GitHub.