Read what you came for.
Keep the file exactly as it was.
Parchment is a Mac reader for plain markdown. Tell it what you are reading for and the sections that do not serve that fold away, counted and explained. Your text is never edited, never hidden without saying so, and never moved into anything.
macOS 13 or later · 1.5 MB · no account, no sync, no third-party analytics
That is the real scorer from the app, running on this page. Change the focus and watch the count change. Nothing about the document text is rewritten at any point, which is the whole claim, so the counter on the right checks it after every fold.
Three laws, enforced in code
Most tools that shorten a document quietly decide things for you. This one shows its work and can be overruled with one click.
Folds never edit
The text on disk and the text on screen are the same bytes. Folding changes what is visible and in what order. It does not summarise, rewrite, or paraphrase a single line.
Folded is never hidden
A count and a reason stay on screen. Open everything with one click. A fold you open by hand never closes itself again, and searching inside a folded section opens it. You can always tell the difference between "the document does not say that" and "the lens folded it."
Stake never folds
Anything marked urgent, blocking, or a hard decision stays open no matter what you asked for. A reading tool must never be able to hide the thing that needed your attention.
“Delete Parchment tomorrow and every file still opens in everything else, unchanged.”
Plain .md on disk. No vault, no import step, no proprietary format, no rewrite
when you open a file. Point it at a folder of notes and it reads the folder live, writing
no index and adopting nothing. This is written into the product spec, not the roadmap.
The rest of it
A reading instrument, not another editor. The writer stays whatever you already use.
- Reading typography as a first concern, with six themes
- ⌘⇧F searches every note in a folder, no indexing or importing
- Outline with scroll-spy, and find in page
- Zen mode for one calm column
- Math and diagrams render offline, nothing is fetched
- Syntax highlighting, callouts, wiki links, frontmatter
- Live reload while you edit in another app
- ⌘E hands the file to your editor and gets out of the way
- Split view against the raw source at any time
- Print or export to PDF
Lens is a lexical scorer that runs on your machine. It does not call anything, and there is no account to make.
One price, one machine, yours
$24
One time. Not a subscription. A reader should not bill you monthly.
right click → Open and macOS asks once, then never again. Notarization is
coming out of the first sales rather than before them.