Free Alternative to Ulysses

Obsidian 1.13.4 (`brew install --cask obsidian`) is still the default free Ulysses escape hatch in August 2026. Plain markdown on disk beats Ulysses' proprietary library when you care about longevity. Sync and some publish features are paid add-ons—the editor itself is free. Longform and similar community plugins can approximate sheet stacking, but you will spend setup time Ulysses ships out of the box. That is the honest trade: zero subscription versus more configuration.

I dropped a massive nested folder of academic papers into Zettlr. The app barely blinked. It relies heavily on Pandoc for exports. You gain absolute control over the final PDF or Word document formatting. The user interface feels a bit heavy compared to native Mac apps. The citation manager integration completely won me over. Ulysses entirely lacks Zotero support. Zettlr handles citations beautifully. It runs on Electron. You will notice the battery drain on older Intel Macs. On a modern Apple Silicon chip, it runs perfectly fine. I particularly liked the built-in Pomodoro timer for forcing myself through difficult chapters. August 2026: Zettlr 4.7.0 is current on Homebrew (`brew install --cask zettlr`) and remains actively maintained for academic markdown writing.

FSNotes is written entirely in Swift. It feels exactly like a Mac app should feel. I loaded 10,000 plain text files into it. Scrolling remained perfectly smooth without a single dropped frame. It respects Apple's Human Interface Guidelines completely. It lacks the direct publishing integrations of Ulysses. For pure drafting, it punches way above its weight class. I really appreciate the AES-256 encryption for securing sensitive journal entries. The folder management is basic. You will not find advanced metadata handling here. It is just a very fast place to write and store text. FSNotes 7.3.1 remains actively maintained on Homebrew.

MarkText is a clean real-time markdown editor. It did ship v0.19.1 in June 2026, so it is not fully dead—but Homebrew now marks cask `mark-text` deprecated because it fails macOS Gatekeeper checks (scheduled disable 2026-09-01). That is a serious install-trust problem. Prefer Obsidian or Zettlr unless you sideload a notarized build you personally verify. Do not treat MarkText as the default recommendation in 2026.

Joplin feels more like an Evernote replacement than a strict Ulysses competitor. I imported a massive notebook. I immediately liked the split-pane preview. You write markdown on the left and see the rendered text on the right. The sync engine is incredibly flexible. I set it up to sync via my own Nextcloud server in about five minutes. The web clipper is fantastic for pulling in research. The actual writing interface is decidedly utilitarian. It lacks the typographical elegance of Ulysses. You are trading visual polish for absolute data ownership. August 2026 Homebrew ships Joplin 3.6.15 with ongoing releases.

MacDown is effectively abandoned. The last meaningful GitHub release is from January 2020, and Homebrew marks `macdown` deprecated for Gatekeeper failures. It may still open markdown files, but it is not a responsible Ulysses replacement in 2026. Use CotEditor, Obsidian, or FSNotes instead.

Logseq forces you to write in bullet points. I hated this at first. I tried drafting an article and the block-based structure felt horribly restrictive. Then I used it for outlining a complex essay. It instantly clicked. You can drag paragraphs around like Lego bricks. It stores everything locally in plain text. The daily journal view is great for logging random thoughts before they become full drafts. Do not try to write a novel in this app. Use it to untangle messy ideas before moving to a traditional editor. Logseq 2.0.1 is current on Homebrew as of August 2026.

Automattic builds Simplenote. It does exactly one thing. It syncs text across devices instantly. I typed a sentence on my Mac and watched it appear on my iPhone a second later. It supports basic markdown. You have to toggle the preview mode manually. The interface is completely devoid of distractions. I use it strictly as a scratchpad for ideas I want to access anywhere. The lack of folders drives me crazy for larger projects. You have to rely entirely on tags for organization.

CotEditor boots up instantly. I use it constantly to view markdown files without loading a heavier app. It handles syntax highlighting perfectly. It does not bother with fancy previews or library management. The app is completely open source. It feels exactly like a built-in macOS utility. I love the character inspector tool for finding weird hidden formatting spaces. It is decidedly a code-adjacent editor. You will not find publishing tools here.