Plaintext

A quiet, fullscreen-first editor for plain text.

• One document at a time
• Local autosave and version history
• No rich text, syntax highlighting, spellcheck, tabs, accounts, or network use

The beta runs on Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later, 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, and 64-bit Linux with GTK 4. The Windows beta is a self-contained executable and does not require a separate .NET installation.

Build from source

Plaintext has separate native applications for each platform. The Package.swift file at the repository root is the macOS-only AppKit application; do not run swift build on Linux.

• macOS: run ./build-app.sh, then open Plaintext.app.

• Windows: run dotnet build Windows/Plaintext.Windows.csproj --configuration Release.

• Linux: install the Rust toolchain plus GTK 4 and Fontconfig development packages, then run cargo run --manifest-path Linux/Cargo.toml.

  On Ubuntu or Debian: sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libfontconfig1-dev.

The Linux release archive contains the executable, bundled fonts, icon, and desktop launcher. Run Plaintext/Plaintext directly from the unpacked archive, or install it for the current user:

./Plaintext/install-linux.sh

This installs under ~/.local and does not require root. For a system-wide installation under /usr/local, run sudo ./Plaintext/install-linux.sh --system. The installed uninstaller is at ~/.local/share/plaintext/uninstall.sh (or /usr/local/share/plaintext/uninstall.sh for a system-wide installation).

cargo install is not recommended because it installs only the executable, without the fonts and desktop integration resources required by the application.

License

Plaintext is released under the MIT License. The bundled typefaces are released under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.