nvALT back from the dead

While the world waits for nvUltra to finish its years-long beta, I’m updating nvALT to keep things running until I can offer the viable alternative. Appropriate to the season, nvALT is rising from the grave. Braiiiins!

Brains, in all seriousness, because nvALT became a second brain for a lot of people. Myself included. I’ve been using nvUltra instead for years now, but it’s not publicly available yet and I left a lot of people in the lurch. I’m going to be using nvALT and nvUltra in the same sentences a bit in this post, so you might have to train yourself to read: nvALT == old version, nvUltra == upcoming (unreleased) new version.

If you don’t want the whole story, skip to the download. Note that because of all the changes I had to make it compile for Apple Silicon, the old auto-update won’t work. You have to download 3.0 directly, and after that updates will function normally.

Backstory

The original Notational Velocity is also seeing updates for the first time in years right now, so I was encouraged to get nvALT modernized. nvUltra, to me, is a far superior app, and I’m not hesitant to keep nvALT running for now — I’m convinced users interested in the improvements in nvUltra will be willing to pay for it.

So I’ve been modernizing the codebase and making it compile and run on Apple Silicon. I brought in upstream fixes from Notational Velocity. Switched it from the old Multimarkdown processor to a new build of Apex. Fixed some editing issues. Removed SimpleNote and Peggd and added Marked Share publishing.

I’m not setting up Marked Share as a full SimpleNote replacement in nvALT quite yet. Marked Share is ready to handle it, at least as far as the API goes, but a couple hundred thousand notes might cost me more to run than I’m prepared to pay before I start charging anything for it. So for now it just works as one-off publishing and sharing, not a full online sync/backup. That may evolve.

nvALT predated my Howzit build notes system, so putting the pieces back together and rebuilding the publishing pipeline was somewhat painstaking. Hopefully I got it all right. And it’s all documented in my build notes for the future.

I went ahead and made a simple Icon Composer icon for it. It’s not nearly as cool as the old nvALT icon, but that one didn’t look great in the Squircle and I needed something that still looked up-to-date in the Dock.

If you’ve been a long-time nvALT user, this update is for you. I’m not trying to add a bunch of new users at this point, but I’m also not trying to avoid it, so do what you will. If you’ve been using it, though, and I inadvertently broke a feature you’d come to rely on, please let me know. You can contact me directly or post an issue on GitHub.

Like I said, nvUltra is a complete rewrite, with way better Markdown features and preview, multiple notebooks, subfolders, and a whole lot more. When the time comes (shooting for 2026 still), I think folks will switch over.

Changelog

CHANGED

• nvALT now requires macOS 12 or later.
• Check for Updates works again on current macOS, using Sparkle 2 and the existing designheresy feed.
• MultiMarkdown preview is rendered by Apex instead of the bundled multimarkdown tool.
• Preview Share publishes the note to Marked Share instead of Peggd and copies an unlisted link.
• Note text and the note list use the regular system font size. Existing Helvetica 12 notes and the old 11 or 12 point list size are updated once.
• Note list headers are flat, with a hairline separator and a chevron for the sorted column.
• The search field no longer draws its old horizontal border lines.
• Remove Simplenote sync and the Synchronization tab from Notes settings.
• Replace the preview Save HTML button with Open in Marked for plain text notes stored on disk.
• Turn on Markdown shortcuts by default, so Command-B and Command-I insert syntax instead of rich text.
• Use the new app icon, including the Icon Composer icon on current macOS and a generated icon for older systems.
• Store new note databases as plain text files instead of a single database. Existing database-only libraries stay as they are.
• Use md as the default extension for plain text notes, including libraries that were using txt, text, or utf8. A custom extension is left as the default.
• Store note tags as Finder tags. Existing OpenMeta tags on note files are copied over on launch, and later edits stay in Finder.

NEW

• Open Marked Streaming Preview sends the current note to Marked and opens x-marked://stream/. It is in the Preview menu and the status menu.
• Highlight Markdown syntax in the editor while Markdown completion is on.
• Ask once, on launch, whether to convert a Rich Text library to Markdown.
• Add Convert to Markdown in Notes settings. Rich Text notes are converted, plain text notes are copied as they are, and the files are written into a new folder that then becomes the notes folder. The current folder is left unchanged.

IMPROVED

• nvALT runs natively on Apple silicon as well as Intel.
• Web links in notes are found by the system link detector. Double-bracket wiki links still work.
• Encrypted notes still open. Crypto now uses the system libraries instead of the bundled OpenSSL.
• nvALT uses standard Finder tags instead of OpenMeta tags when syncing to Finder

FIXED

• Typing in a note no longer crashes if the text gets shorter during an edit.
• The password generator no longer stalls when the length is longer than the character set.
• Make the Marked Share confirmation follow light and dark mode and show its buttons.
• Pressing Return on an empty continued list item removes the marker and leaves a blank line.

Download

nvALT v3.0.0 (130)

Download nvALT v3.0.0 (130)

A fork of Notational Velocity with MultiMarkdown preview and advanced Markdown editing capabilities. Other good stuff.

Published 06/08/13.

Updated 10/24/26. Changelog

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