Write is the editor you use on hubnx.com, as a free app on your own computer: Mac, Windows and Linux. It writes plain Markdown files in a folder you choose, needs no account until you press Publish, and sends nothing anywhere until then.
Get it
Download it from hubnx.com/apps: a disk image for the Mac, the Microsoft Store for Windows, a .deb or an AppImage for Linux. About 11 MB. Installed copies update themselves; the Mac asks nothing and the AppImage keeps itself current, while a .deb updates with apt. On a Mac with Homebrew: brew tap hubnx/tap && brew trust hubnx/tap && brew install --cask hubnx/tap/write (Homebrew 7 asks you to trust a tap before it installs from it).
Open a folder
Press Open Folder… (⌘O, Ctrl+O on Windows and Linux) and choose any folder. Every .md file in it is a page, in folders inside it too; pictures, films and PDFs sit beside them in media/. An Obsidian vault opens as it is — [[links]] and ![[embeds]] work — and so does any folder of Markdown from another program. Write never rewrites a link it did not make.
New Page (⌘N) starts a page; its first heading is its name, and renaming the heading renames the file. Pages open as tabs; Find a Page… (⌘P) finds one by name. Two panes side by side show two pages, or one page beside its Markdown.
Write
It is the same editor as on hubnx.com — Markdown as you type, a / menu of blocks, a bar of formats over chosen words, tables, callouts, maths, diagrams, code, footnotes, pictures, films, recordings and PDFs. Everything in the editor's guide applies here: the bar's three tabs and three layouts, ⇧⌘P for every command, the group that joins the bar when the cursor is in a table, a link, a code block, a picture, a callout or a diagram.
A picture, film or PDF dropped into a page is copied into the folder's media/ under its own name — media/Beach-day.png — and shown in the page at once.
Find and replace (⌘F) works across the page; Focus, Typewriter and a word goal are on the bar's View tab.
Nothing is lost
Write keeps a history of every page: a version each time it is opened and every five minutes while you write, the newest hundred, inside the folder's hidden .hubnx/history/, so it travels with the folder. History shows each version as readers would see it and puts one back. Name this version gives one a name — "Sent to Ana", "Before the cut" — and a named version is kept for good. What changed shows a version's lines against the page as it is now, or against any other version — the older on the left, what went struck through, what came in green.
A folder that lives in iCloud, Dropbox or Git, or that another program edits at the same time, is safe: Write writes only over what it last read, and when a page changes outside it, it shows the change and merges it with what you typed.
Publish a page
Press Publish…. The first time, your browser opens hubnx.com to sign in and allow this computer — or sign in beforehand with Sign in to Hub Nexus at the foot of the sidebar; after that, nothing opens. The page lands on hubnx as a private draft — or, for a page hubnx already has, as a change to it, with what changes shown first — and its files go with it. You publish it on hubnx, where readers find it and where a page earns its writer money. Where the page lives on hubnx is written into the page's front block (hubnx:), so the next Publish writes into the same page from any computer the folder reaches.
Publish a folder
File › Publish Folder… reads every page in the folder and compares it with hubnx: New, Changed (open one to see its lines), Changed on hubnx too (someone saved it there since the folder last sent it — unticked, so nothing is written over by accident) and Unchanged. Send, and each ticked page lands as a draft, one after another; a page that fails is named and the rest go on. Then My Pages on hubnx lists each with its Publish. Where to can be a publication instead: leave the address empty and hubnx opens a page that makes a new publication from the folder's pages in reading order, in one press; give the address of one of your publications and hubnx opens it arranged to the folder's order. The order is the folder's index.md — a contents page that lists each page as a link; Write writes one if the folder has none. On the publication's page, Publish all pending drafts then publishes every draft in one press. Nothing goes live from the app.
Bring pages in
Bring In from Hub Nexus… copies one of your published pages into the folder, with its files, so the folder can carry its next change — or a whole publication: give its address and every page comes in reading order, with an index.md that lists them and names the publication, so Publish Folder… offers that publication back as the destination and the folder goes back as the book it came from. Import an Archive… turns an export from Medium, Substack, WordPress, Ghost, Notion, Confluence or Word into pages of the folder, each with where it lived and when in its front block — nothing is published until you choose.
Export
File › Export writes the page as a PDF (with a bookmark for each heading), as HTML, or as a Word document.
On your phone
There is no phone app yet. Keep the folder in iCloud Drive, Dropbox or a Git repository and edit the same files on the phone with Obsidian or iA Writer; when the folder reaches your computer, Write shows what changed and merges it with what you wrote. Pictures the phone adds under media/ come along.
Keys
| Keys | Does |
|---|---|
| ⌘N | new page |
| ⌘O | open a folder |
| ⌘P | find a page |
| ⌘F | find and replace |
| ⇧⌘P | every command, in one list |
| ⌥⌘T | the next layout of the bar |
| ⌘W, ⇧⌘W | close the tab, close the window |
Ctrl in place of ⌘ on Windows and Linux; the editor's own keys are in the editor's guide.
What Write never does
It makes no account and sends nothing until you press Publish; Publish sends only that page or those pages and their files. Every six hours it asks hubnx.com whether a newer version exists, sending its version and system. Your folder is yours: delete the app and the files stay, plain Markdown any program reads.
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