Why Unmarked is free

I built Unmarked because I just wanted to read my Markdown files the way they are meant to look, not buried under # and * symbols. I went looking for an app that would do that, and I couldn't find a free one.

Everything was a subscription. A monthly fee, just to open my own files? The one app that wasn't a subscription cost seventy dollars. A whole operating system used to cost that.

And almost all of them quietly kept a copy of your file on their servers. One mistake on their end, and your private writing isn't private anymore. I couldn't even use them for work. At my day job we're careful about where company files are allowed to live.

So I made the app I wanted. It is free, it never sends your files anywhere, and they stay on your Mac. That is the whole pitch. But "free" makes people suspicious, and they are right to be, so here is the rest of it.

People hear a Mac app is free and start hunting for the price they missed. A pro tier behind a paywall. A sign-in screen that wants an email. The reflex is earned, because free usually means you are the product. The usual catches are ads, an upsell, or your data, and Unmarked has none of them.

The data part isn't a promise I am asking you to take on faith. Unmarked has no network access. Its sandbox covers three things: reading and writing the files you open, remembering them so Recent works, and printing. There is no network entitlement, so the app cannot reach the internet at all. You do not have to trust me on that; the Security page shows you the one Terminal command that proves it.

That one missing line settles everything downstream. You cannot collect data you have no way to send. No analytics, no telemetry, nothing reporting back, because there is nowhere to report to. Files open and save in place, the original file, no hidden copies on the side.

Then why give it away? Charging would mean building the machinery to charge: accounts, license keys, a server to check them against, a connection to do the checking. The day Unmarked has to confirm you paid is the day it has to talk to the internet. Free is what keeps it sealed shut.

So you get an app that does one job well, leaves your files exactly where you left them, and asks nothing of you. Not your email, not your money, not your attention.

Free is the only version I could build without watching you. So it is the one I built.