Markor Sync

Last reviewed Sep 13, 2026 · 766 words

Markor is not a server and never will be. It is a 6,000-star, Apache-licensed Android editor for Markdown, todo.txt, and Zim wiki files that lives on your phone and reads a plain folder. The "sync" part is a job you hand to Syncthing, and that pairing is the entire product: a notes system with no account, no database, and no server process, where losing every device but one costs you nothing.

The stack is two apps and one folder

Install Markor from F-Droid or Google Play. Install Syncthing (the Syncthing-Fork build on F-Droid is the one still maintained for Android). Create a folder, say /storage/emulated/0/Notes, point Markor's notebook directory at it in Settings, and share the same folder from Syncthing to your desktop and to any always-on box you already run. That third device matters: phone and laptop are rarely awake at the same time, so a small VPS or a Raspberry Pi acting as an always-online Syncthing peer is what makes sync feel instant rather than "whenever both happen to be on". The server-side footprint is Syncthing's usual 64 to 128 MB and nothing else.

Two Syncthing settings stop the conflict files

Syncthing writes note.sync-conflict-20260913-...md copies when two devices edit the same file before syncing. Two settings reduce this to a rare event. First, enable "Watch for changes" on the folder so an edit propagates within seconds instead of at the 3,600-second rescan default. Second, keep Markor's autosave on so a note is written to disk while you type, not when you back out of the editor. Running this for a couple of years, I get a conflict file roughly once a quarter, always from editing the same to-do list on two devices while offline, and Markor shows both files side by side so you merge by hand and delete one.

What Markor does that a hosted notes app doesn't

Markor's file view is the folder itself, so any file another tool writes appears immediately: a todo.txt your desktop scripts append to, a daily note created by a cron job, a Markdown export from Paperless-ngx dropped into the tree. It renders Markdown with a preview toggle, has a to-do mode with checkboxes, understands todo.txt priorities and contexts, and ships QuickNote and Journal shortcuts for the capture-now-file-later habit. Home screen widgets and share-to-Markor from any app round it out. What it lacks is anything server-side: no web UI, no cross-device search beyond what your desktop editor provides, no collaboration, and no iOS build at all. If someone in the household has an iPhone, this stack is not for them.

Desktop side: any editor that opens a folder

Because the notes are files, the desktop client is whatever you like. Obsidian opening the synced folder as a vault is the most common pairing and adds backlinks and graph view on top of the same files; VS Code, Zettlr, or plain vim work equally well. The rule is one folder, many editors, and no editor that keeps a proprietary index inside the folder. Obsidian's .obsidian/ directory is safe to sync, but its workspace file churns constantly, so add .obsidian/workspace* to the folder's .stignore.

When Joplin is the better answer

Joplin is the bigger project here by a wide margin: iOS, desktop, and Android clients, end-to-end encryption, and a proper sync server. It stores notes in a SQLite database with Markdown export rather than as loose files, which is the trade. If you want a polished cross-platform app and do not care whether your notes are files on disk at every moment, pick Joplin. If the point is that your notes are a folder of text that will outlive every app, Markor plus Syncthing is the cleanest version of that idea on Android. The notes category page lays out the rest of the field.

What I'd do

Syncthing on the phone, the laptop, and one always-on box; a single Notes folder; Markor on Android and Obsidian on the desktop opening the same tree; .stignore excluding editor workspace files. Add a nightly restic snapshot of the folder on the always-on machine, because sync is not backup and a deletion propagates exactly as fast as an edit. Zero servers, zero accounts, and a system I have not had to migrate since the day I set it up.