# Atomic Editor

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Atomic Editor and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** An Obsidian-style live preview editor built on CodeMirror 6 that people find fills a gap and feels good to use. Common caveat: selection highlighting doesn't show for some users.

## Why people recommend it

- Fills gap for live preview editing (2 comments): "I didn't find anything like it with native virtualization that felt right to me so I built Atomic Editor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48346591)) "This is awesome, and exactly what I've been looking for recently." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378118))
- Interaction feels good to use (2 comments): "It seems like selection highlighting(?) doesn't work but the interaction feels good otherwise." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48346269)) "your implementation appears to get a lot of things right" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48349013))

## What people warn about

- Selection highlight missing (2 comments): "It seems like selection highlighting(?) doesn't work but the interaction feels good otherwise." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48346269)) "Selection worked for me on mobile, but doesn't show a highlight." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48346445))
- Typing glitches and cursor jumps (2 comments): "suddenly no matter where I typed, my text was ending up at the end of the document" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48348553)) "seems to be very broken , typing things around and things jumps everywhere." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48346635))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [SmallDocs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/smalldocs.md): 21 recommend
- [OpenKnowledge](https://hackerapproved.com/p/openknowledge.md): 20 recommend
- [Typora](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typora.md): 19 recommend
- [Margin Markdown editor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/markdown-editor-for-mac-ios-and-web.md): 15 recommend
- [iA Writer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ia-writer.md): 14 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Atomic Editor", https://hackerapproved.com/p/atomic-editor/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).