Stenmark

Your markdown librarian. A GTK4 Markdown reader, organizer and editor.

Alpha software. Still tightening the screws..

Features

• Folder sidebar with document panel — browse and manage markdown files
• Subfolder navigation — drill into nested folders from the document panel
• Root folder switcher — quickly change scope via the sidebar header
• Open a file or directory from the command line: stenmark ~/notes/ or stenmark todo.md
• External file handling — opening a file outside the root folder shows a sidebar prompt to navigate back to the root
• Frontmatter tags — add tags via YAML frontmatter (tags: [a, b]), edit with the tag popover in the header bar
• Tag filter pane (Ctrl+T) — select tags to find matching documents (AND logic); clickable tag chips on document rows
• Full-text search across documents (Ctrl+Shift+F) — scoped to the selected folder
• Quick filter on the document list (Ctrl+F on the documents page) — also matches tags
• Find in document (Ctrl+F in viewer) with customizable highlight colors
• WebKit-based rendered markdown view with syntax highlighting
• CodeMirror 6 editor with live preview pane and scroll sync
• 48 editor colour themes — Dracula, Nord, Gruvbox, Tokyo Night, VS Code, Solarized and friends — searchable in Preferences, with a colour preview beside the picker
• Edit where you were reading — double-click any text to open the editor with the caret on that word; switching back scrolls the reader to the line you were editing (double-click can be turned off in Preferences)
• Sidebar hides while editing, giving the editor and preview pane the full window width (optional, in Preferences)
• Esc leaves edit mode and saves (when the editor's find panel is open, the first Esc closes that instead)
• Dark mode — follows system theme
• File management — rename, move, trash, delete empty folders, create documents from context menu
• Pin folders to top — pinned folders appear first in the sidebar and document panel with a pin icon
• Pin documents to top — pinned documents float to the top of their folder; click the pin icon to unpin
• File watching — auto-reloads on disk changes
• Document linking — click relative markdown links (e.g. [notes](../notes.md)) to navigate between documents; external links open in the default browser
• Link navigation history — go back/forward with Alt+Left/Right, mouse side buttons, or the right-click context menu
• Task list checkboxes — toggle directly in the rendered view
• Table of contents popover — navigate headings, click to scroll
• Export to PDF (via menu), open in external app, copy as rich text
• Welcome screen with root directory setup prompt when no folder is configured
• Remember last folder across sessions (optional, in Preferences)
• Configurable keyboard shortcuts, fonts, and themes
• Translated interface — English and German, switchable in Preferences (see TRANSLATING.md)

Dependencies

• Python 3.10+
• GTK 4.0, libadwaita 1
• WebKitGTK 6.0
• python-markdown, Pygments, PyYAML
• Meson, Ninja, gettext (build)

Install

Flatpak

Stenmark is not on Flathub — their policy doesn't allow AI-assisted apps, and Stenmark is — so it has its own Flatpak repository:

flatpak remote-add --user stenmark https://mkay.github.io/stenmark-flatpak/stenmark.flatpakrepo
flatpak install stenmark de.singular.stenmark

Updates then arrive with flatpak update. The GNOME runtime comes from Flathub, so that remote has to exist too:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists --user flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Arch Linux

pacman -S python python-gobject gtk4 libadwaita webkitgtk-6.0 python-markdown python-pygments python-yaml meson ninja
makepkg -sic

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt install ./stenmark_*.deb

From source

meson setup builddir --prefix=/usr
meson compile -C builddir
sudo meson install -C builddir

Usage

stenmark                        # opens the configured root directory
stenmark ~/Documents/Notes/     # opens a specific directory (session only)
stenmark ~/Notes/todo.md        # opens a file directly (sidebar hidden)

Configuration

Settings are stored in ~/.config/stenmark/settings.json and can be changed from the Preferences dialog. All changes take effect immediately, except the interface language, which applies on restart.

License

GPL-3.0-only — version 3 of the GNU General Public License, and not "or any later version". The full text is in LICENSE, the copyright notice in COPYRIGHT.

Artwork and name

The application icon is licensed separately, under CC BY 4.0. COPYRIGHT lists the files.

The name is not licensed by either grant — give a fork its own.

Credits

Stenmark bundles the following, both GPL-compatible — COPYRIGHT has the details:

• Phosphor Icons (MIT) — the toolbar and sidebar icons
• CodeMirror 6 (MIT) — the bundled editor

Translations are contributed by native speakers — see TRANSLATING.md if you would like to add yours.

Screenshots

Disclaimer

This project was developed with AI assistance. The code has been analysed with Codacy and Bandit. Use at your own discretion.