What has stopped me from using ANY mainstream markdown editors for my blog is because they SUCK at handling images and renaming. They typically fall into a few categories:

I do want to state that most of the time, I am using the clipboard to copy and paste images, I am not talking about dragging and dropping images, that takes wayyy too much time, having to open up a finder window and finding a file.

1. Import and Forget

This is the simplest behavior, VSCode does it:

However, because screenshots are always named some gibberish such as SCR-20251111-kcnb.png I almost ALWAYS want to IMMEDIATELY rename them. VSCode makes this excruiatingly difficult. I have to:

Inserting an image and trying to make it maintainable for later me requires NINE STEPS PER INSERTION?!?!

2. Auto update

Obsidian has an "Auto update internal links after renaming", which sounds helpful, and it is much better than VSCode, but it is still largely inefficient.

There are a couple issues here, mainly the right click menu. Your eyes have to start from the top and trace down it to the "Rename" option. The operation isn't guarenteed, you have to make sure you click the right option, unlike a keyboard shortcut, its vastly less deterministic and I have accidently hit Delete doing this. Overall, pretty good experience, not as optmized as it could be. Another minor issue is that it does not automatically return focus back to my editor after the renaming procedure.

3. My implementation

Having seen these pitfalls, my blog editor implements a much nicer renaming UX.

Whenver you click on a link or a file, a rename window automatically pops up with only the name part selected, you can safely ignore the window if you choose too, which makes it unobstructive.å

In addition, my implmentation also RETURNS FOCUS back to the editor after the markdown link, meaning you don't need to switch focuses back from what was supposed to be an intermediate UI anyways.

And yes, it does search for all occurences of the image (for whatever reason there might be multiple of the same image) throughout the file.

Everything is deterministic (the only clicking you do is clicking on the link, which is MUCH more click surface area than a drop down menu, everything else is all keyboard-centric). You don't need to move all the way to a sidebar, because we're writing, not coding, I don't care where my files go or how they are stored.

A keyboard shortcut is muscle memory; a context menu is a visual search task. Every time you force a writer to look at UI, you've already lost. The best UI for writing is invisible UX.

4. HM: Github

Forget renaming, why keep your files in the repo anyways? Make free use of Github's S3 or Azure storage: Technically, it scores the best:

On a more serious note, I don't actually mind this implementation. It fits in nicely with my view that images should be stored within markdown, and github accomplishes exactly this. I never have to worry about where my images are, or renaming them in the first place. And since its rare I want to use the same image twice (basically never), why even rename? Only downside of this approach is that I still want to be able to manage my files locally, and for that, I (and LLMs!) do want to be able to easily identify them.

More discussion on Markdown Editors

Tool Bar

A lot of markdown editors have a toolbar like this, which defeats the purpose of a WYSIWYG editor. The text is supposed to be readable, and really, how much time are you saving at all by moving your mouse all the way to the top instead of just typing * twice or thrice. I haven't even implemented Ctrl+B/I/K to bold, italicize, and hyperlink text because I don't find myself using it, it's not much faster than just typing out _ or ** or []().

Sidebar

The two examples I've shown above all have file browsers to manage folders, images, etc. Which again defeats the purpose of a WYSIWYG language. I like to think that all the images that I reference in a markdown document are CONTAINED within that document. That if the images aren't used, they shouldnt be there. So why do I need to keep track of them? My editor auto prunes all images not in the post, and I NEVER see the images or files anywhere except in the editor. This keeps my attention focused in the editor, not in a file browser (ironically)

The beauty of Markdown lies in its radical simplicity—plain text that remains human-readable. Yet somehow, we've built an entire ecosystem of editors that betray this core principle, laden with file browsers, toolbars, and modal dialogs that treat writers like system administrators. The real insight is that every click saved is a moment of creative flow preserved. Writing tools should abstract away the filesystem, not expose it. When you're crafting a document, images and files should feel like part of the text itself, integrated and effortlessly maintainable. Until more editors embrace this philosophy—optimizing for keystrokes over clicks, for flow over file management—Markdown's true potential will remain buried under unnecessary complexity.