A CommonMark editor, a clipboard manager that syncs over iCloud, and a JavaScript automation engine, all in one app. Taio is a Markdown text editor for iPhone, iPad, and Mac built around text actions, chainable steps in the spirit of Shortcuts that run on whatever you're writing or copying.
The editor side covers GitHub Flavored Markdown with syntax-highlighted code blocks, footnotes, wikilinks, and #tags, plus a formatting keyboard row and tabbed documents. Clips is the other half. Any entry in that searchable clipboard list can take an action: Translate, Extract Content, Text Tokenization, Merge Clippings. Documents live as plain .md files in Files locations you pick, On My iPhone or iCloud Drive, with tags and backlinks layered on top.
The press took it seriously from day one. iMore read the December 2020 launch as a possible successor to Editorial, the automation-first editor iOS power users never got over, and Club MacStories gave the text actions a multi-part series a few months later. The catch shows up in the version history. The last update shipped in September 2023, and the App Store reviews since read like vigils: an October 2025 reviewer titled theirs "Fingers crossed for an update" and still rated it five stars, while a March 2025 two-star counted most of the toolbar as locked behind the upgrade.
What works
- Text actions chain editor and clipboard steps, with a JavaScript engine for writing your own
- Wikilinks, backlinks, and tags over plain Markdown files you can open anywhere
What to know
- No update since September 2023, and reviewers openly worry the app is done
- E. Vlietinck's 2022 review found search and replace sluggish and the graph view thin next to Obsidian
iPhoners still missing Editorial are the obvious audience, and a May 2026 review still calls it "best of its kind." Build on it with eyes open: everything stays plain text in folders you choose, so if the quiet stretch turns permanent, your notes walk away clean.
