Manuscript

A fast, native GNOME Markdown reader and editor written in Rust

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Features

• Beautiful rendering — graduated heading hierarchy with a blue accent per level, bold, italic, strikethrough, lists, blockquotes with a soft tint, horizontal rules, and images with rounded corners
• GFM callouts — > [!NOTE], > [!TIP], > [!WARNING], > [!DANGER], > [!IMPORTANT] render as coloured blocks with an icon and bold title (custom title supported)
• Wikilinks — [[Note Name]] and [[Note Name|alias]] render in a violet accent (vault navigation is a future feature)
• Task lists — - [ ] / - [x] render as filled / empty discs (● / ○)
• Inline code with warm palette — amber on cream / dark-on-warm so code stands out without competing with the heading accents
• Syntax-highlighted code blocks — powered by syntect with 100+ languages
• GFM tables — rendered with aligned columns and box-drawing characters
• Rich tables — opt-in GtkGrid rendering with cell borders, header styling and inline formatting inside cells (Preferences → Writer)
• Clickable links — open in default browser with hover cursor
• Three view modes — Read, Edit (GtkSourceView), and Split (side-by-side with live preview)
• Outline panel — F9 toggles a sidebar with all document headings (overlay on phones)
• Smart list continuation — Enter inside a - / 1. / - [ ] item continues the list with the right marker
• Session restore — reopens last file, view mode and scroll position on launch
• Full-text search — Ctrl+F with a live X / Y match counter; current match in green, others in yellow
• Find and Replace — Ctrl+H with Replace / Replace All and a brief green flash on changed text
• Spell check — inline underlines via libspelling, language picker from installed hunspell/myspell dictionaries
• Multi-window — opening a file from the file manager opens a new window so two docs sit side by side (toggleable)
• Writer modes — Distraction-free fullscreen (F11 hides chrome), Focus mode (dim everything but the current paragraph), Typewriter mode (current line pinned to viewport center) — all toggleable in Preferences
• Rendered print — Ctrl+P prints the rendered markdown, not the raw source: headings keep size and weight, code blocks keep their shading, tables render as a box-drawing grid
• Export as PDF — File menu → Export as PDF… writes an A4 PDF via the same layout engine as print (no pandoc/LaTeX dependency); font and margins configurable in Preferences
• Remote images — ![alt](https://…) is fetched asynchronously, cached in memory, and rendered inline
• Quick Open — Ctrl+Shift+O opens a fuzzy popover over recent files and markdown siblings of the current document
• Auto-save — optional Preferences toggle that writes the current file ~1.5 s after the last edit; suppresses the reload toast during a self-write
• Mobile UX — edge-swipe to open the outline, bottom action bar with markdown shortcuts (Bold, Italic, Heading, Bullet, Task, Link, Code) when a source view is focused on narrow screens, horizontal swipe to switch Read ↔ Edit
• Customizable — font family, size, line spacing, line numbers, text wrapping
• Session zoom — Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0 adjusts text size on the fly
• Word count — words and reading time live in the header bar while you edit
• Writing stats footer — optional bottom footer with word count, reading time and a daily-goal tracker (icon-prefixed segments, star icon flips from outline to filled once today's count meets the goal)
• Keyboard scrolling in View mode — Up/Down/PgUp/PgDn/Home/End and Space (Shift+Space scrolls up) scroll the rendered document
• Theme-aware — follows system light/dark preference, updates automatically
• Recent files — quick access to last 10 opened files
• File watching — Reload toast on external changes (no overwriting unsaved edits)
• Print support — Ctrl+P to print or export
• Drag & drop — drop .md files onto the window
• Adaptive — works on phones and tablets (GNOME Mobile, Phosh)
• Fast — native Rust, no WebKitGTK, instant startup

 

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+N	New file (untitled)
Ctrl+O	Open file
Ctrl+Shift+O	Quick Open (recents + folder, fuzzy)
Ctrl+S	Save file
Ctrl+W	Close current file (or window if welcome screen is shown)
Ctrl+E	Toggle edit mode
Ctrl+Shift+E	Toggle split view
F9	Toggle outline panel
Ctrl+F	Search
Ctrl+H	Find and Replace (in Edit/Split)
Ctrl+P	Print
Ctrl+,	Preferences
Ctrl+Q	Close window
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z	Undo / Redo
Ctrl+Y	Redo
Ctrl+B / Ctrl+I	Bold / Italic (wraps selection)
Ctrl+K	Insert link [text](url)
Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0	Zoom in / out / reset
F11	Toggle distraction-free fullscreen
Esc	Exit fullscreen

Install

From source

Dependencies (Fedora):

sudo dnf install gcc cargo gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel gtksourceview5-devel pango-devel oniguruma-devel

Dependencies (Debian/Ubuntu):

sudo apt install build-essential cargo libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev libgtksourceview-5-dev libpango1.0-dev

Build and install:

git clone https://gitlab.com/ilshat-apps/manuscript.git
cd manuscript
make install

This installs to ~/.local by default. Use PREFIX=/usr make install for system-wide installation.

Run without installing

cargo run -- path/to/file.md

Flatpak

# Build locally (requires flatpak-builder)
flatpak-builder --user --install build io.gitlab.ilshat_apps.manuscript.yml

Uninstall

make uninstall

Packaging

System integrators can build with a custom prefix and staging directory:

make install PREFIX=/usr DESTDIR=$pkgdir

Community packages

• Arch Linux (AUR): manuscript-git — build from the latest main commit.

Other community-maintained packages are welcome — open an issue with a link and it'll be listed here.

Tech Stack

• Language: Rust
• UI toolkit: GTK4 + libadwaita
• Markdown parser: pulldown-cmark
• Syntax highlighting: syntect
• Editor: GtkSourceView 5
• Rendering: native GtkTextView + TextTags (no WebKitGTK)

License

Manuscript is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.