Platforms

Slate on macOS feels like any other Mac app. The traffic lights sit in the top-left, the menu bar lives at the top of the screen, and the title bar blends into the window chrome rather than standing apart.

Menu bar

• Slate. About Slate, Acknowledgements, Settings, Hide, Quit.
• File. New, Open, Open Folder, Open Recent, Save, Save As, Close Tab.
• Edit. Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, Find.
• View. Plain, WYSIWYG, Reading, Toggle Split, Toggle Sidebar, Toggle Outline.
• Window. Minimize, Close, Bring All to Front.
• Help. Slate Help (opens this site), Acknowledgements.

File associations

Slate registers itself for .md, .markdown, .mdown, .mkd, and .txt. Right-click a file in Finder and choose Open With to send it to Slate.

Conventions

Cmd is the primary modifier in shortcuts. Cmd + comma opens Settings. The About box uses Slate's in-app dialog rather than the native panel, so the credits format matches the rest of the app.

Slate on Windows uses the in-window menu bar conventional on Windows apps, with Edit and Help menus and the standard window controls in the top-right.

Menu bar

• File. New, Open, Open Folder, Open Recent, Save, Save As, Close Tab, Exit.
• Edit. Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, Find.
• View. Plain, WYSIWYG, Reading, Toggle Split, Toggle Sidebar, Toggle Outline.
• Help. Slate Help, About Slate, Acknowledgements.

File associations

The installer registers Slate for .md, .markdown, and the other Markdown extensions. Right-click a file in Explorer and choose Open With.

Conventions

Ctrl is the primary modifier in shortcuts. Drag and drop from Explorer works as expected; dropping a folder onto the window opens it as a new workspace root.

Slate on Linux follows the conventions of your desktop environment. GNOME-style title bars get the in-window menu under a hamburger; KDE-style sessions use a traditional menu bar.

Menu structure

Same as Windows: File, Edit, View, Help, with Slate Help and Acknowledgements under Help.

File associations

The desktop entry registers Slate for the Markdown MIME types. Use Open With from your file manager's context menu.

Conventions

Ctrl is the primary modifier. Drag and drop works the same as on the other desktops. If your distribution uses a Wayland session, the native file picker is whatever your portal provides.

iOS Coming soon

Slate for iPad and iPhone is on the roadmap. The plan is a single-pane layout that swipes between views, with the sidebar as a slide-out panel. External keyboard shortcuts will match the desktop set so muscle memory carries over.

We are not yet shipping iOS builds. Follow updates from the homepage if you want to be notified when they appear in the App Store.

Web Coming soon

A hosted web build of Slate is planned. It will run in the browser, use the File System Access API for opening and saving local files, and store working state in IndexedDB so a refresh does not lose your edits.

The web build will not have everything the desktop has:

• No command-line argument for opening files.
• No system-wide file associations; opening .md files from the desktop will still launch the native app where available.
• The native file watcher is replaced by browser file handles, which have slightly different conflict behavior.

See external changes for how Slate handles conflicts in general.

On desktop, Slate runs as a single instance. Opening Slate again while it is already running forwards your request to the existing window: any file you passed becomes a new tab in the current session, rather than starting a second copy of the app.