I was a beta tester for TableFlip, an app for editing Markdown (MultiMarkdown) tables painlessly, and I’ve been waiting excitedly to talk about it for quite some time.

The table format that showed up early in MultiMarkdown was very effective for adding HTML tables to documents. All of the pipes and dashes were a pain to type out, though, and if the table got large enough, it got difficult to edit and update. This led to a lot of solutions and text-based utilities, but nothing that made it truly simple.

TableFlip gives you a spreadsheet interface for quickly creating and editing tables in Markdown documents. You can open the file you’re currently editing in a text or Markdown editor and add or modify tables, or create new ones and copy them to the clipboard. Much like Marked, it will make the changes live in the document, and update if the document does. In fact, you can use it with Marked to add advanced capabilities to any text editor.

The output from TableFlip is clean and well-aligned. “Table cleanup” scripts can do this, but with this workflow you don’t have to worry that making changes will mess up all that carefully added whitespace.

I believe that TableFlip is a game changer for anyone who uses tables in their Markdown writing. The current price is $18.99 US, but there’s a “Launch Celebration” sale running until October 15th that will give you an instant 20% discount. The developer is also running a “Share-for-discount” campaign that can earn you 80% off by getting the word out on social media.

TableFlip requires macOS 10.10 or newer. Find more info at the TableFlip website, and see the roadmap for upcoming features.