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I stumbled upon these SyncTeX files in my directories and wanted to know what they are for. I searched this site and the internet and I think I have some vague understanding of what it is but I'm still not very satisfied with my actual knowledge. I've found many questions about configuring SyncTeX but none about what it is and what it does.

So, could someone explain what is SyncTeX and what does it do exactly and/or point to some general purpose documentation?

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SyncTeX is a utility written by Jérôme Laurens which enables synchronization between your source document and the PDF output. If your editor/viewer supports it, then you can click in your source and jump to the equivalent place in the PDF or click in the PDF and it will jump to the appropriate place in your source document.

In TeXShop, for example, Command-click does the navigation. Other editor/viewer pairs may implement the exact commands slightly differently.

The files that it creates store all of the synchronization data that make this magic possible. Gzipped versions of these files are created if you pass the --synctex=1 option to e.g. the pdflatex command (and other engines similarly); non-zipped versions can be created with --synctex=-1, although for a large document these files can be quite large, so the zipped ones are generally to be preferred. See

Usually this is part of the default setting for the compilation command within most TeX-aware editors.

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  • Also note that the only engine (I'm aware of) which doesn't support synctexing is (plain) tex.
    – karlkoeller
    Jun 10, 2013 at 16:14
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    @franz It all depends on whether the previewer and the editor can communicate with SyncTeX. For instance I use Aquamacs and Skim; the communication between the two applications is flawless.
    – egreg
    Jun 10, 2013 at 20:30
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    @egreg I think I understand now. BTW before asking the question I had a vague idea but it was completely wrong :D
    – franz
    Jun 10, 2013 at 20:35
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    I don't use SyncTeX but a coauthor of mine does. Based on what you've written above, @Alan Munn, am I correct in thinking that *.synctex.gz are generated files that I can safely remove from version control?
    – Psychonaut
    Jun 29, 2016 at 11:41
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    @Psychonaut Yes, I would see no problem with that. (I'm not sure why you wouldn't use it, though. It's very helpful.)
    – Alan Munn
    Jun 29, 2016 at 12:30

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