LaTeX Editors/IDEs

Question

What editors/IDEs are available for easing the process of writing TeX/LaTeX documents?

Please state some useful features like code completion, spell checking, building final DVI or PDF files, etc.

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This question is undergoing a systematic refurbishment, see Let’s polish the Editors/IDEs question on Meta. If you’d like to see another editor feature covered here or to take care of an editor that’s not covered yet, share your ideas in that meta question.

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List of editors

Links to answers.

• Archimedes
• Atom
• Auto Latex Equations for Google Docs
• Bakoma TeX Word
• Compositor
• Emacs with AUCTeX
• Emacs with WhizzyTeX
• gedit with the gedit-LaTeX-plugin
• Geany with GeanyLaTeX
• gummi
• Inlage
• IntelliJ IDEA
• jEdit
• JOVE
• Kile
• KTikZ
• Latexian
• Latexila
• LaTeX Base
• LEd
• LyX
• Notepad++
• Overleaf
• Open LaTeX Studio
• Papeeria
• QuatraTeX
• RTextDoc
• DMelt
• ScienHub
• Scientific Word
• Scientific Workplace
• Scribes
• Scribo
• Sublime Text with LaTeXTools or LaTeXing Plugin
• TechWriter
• TeXifier
• TeXlipse for Eclipse
• Texmaker
• TeXnicCenter
• TeXnicle
• Texpen
• TeXShop
• TeXStudio
• TextMate
• TeXworks
• Verbosus
• Vim with LaTeX-Box
• Vim with LaTeX-plugin
• Vim with Snipmate plugin and rubber
• Vim with vimtex
• Visual Studio Code with LaTeX-Workshop
• WinEdt
• Winefish
• WinShell

Answer 1

Geany with GeanyLaTeX

Available for: Windows, Mac, Linux and others
Open Source

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Another great editor is Geany. It comes with support for Windows and Linux. Furthermore the software has a plugin for LaTeX. It is maintained by one of the main developers. The plugin has a wizard for new LaTeX documents, autocompletion, you can easily insert environments and it is well documented. Unfortunately, its author seems to be no longer interested in maintaining it.

Answer 2

Vim with Snipmate plugin and Rubber

Available for: Windows, Mac, Linux and others
Open Source

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I used to use Vim-Latex, but I found it too heavy-weight and rigid. Snipmate provides a subset of the functionality, but it is easier to customize and works for any programming language.

Answer 3

Emacs with WhizzyTeX

Available for: Linux, Unix-based systems
Open Source

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I just recently discovered WhizzyTeX for Emacs. It gives you a real-time preview of your document, as you type. It can also show you where your cursor is with respect to the document.

It works with everything that I've thrown at it: Math, tipa, synttree, TikZ, etc. The only problem I've encountered so far is that TikZ nodes with text get garbled together.

For Ubuntu/Debian users:

1. sudo apt-get install advi whizzytex
2. Start Emacs
3. M-x whizzytex-mode

Answer 4

Papeeria

Online LaTeX editor with real-time collaboration, integrated gnuplot, templates and project versioning

• Platforms: Web browser: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, iOS, Android
• License: Free plan available, paid plan starts from $5/month
• Languages: en
• Unicode: Yes
• Syntax Highlighting: Yes, not customizable
• Code Completion: Yes, not customizable
• Code Folding: Yes
• Spell Checking: Yes
• SyncTeX: Yes
• Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, supports PDF
• Project Management: Yes
• Autosave: Yes

Free plan includes unlimited number of collaborators and public projects and one private project.

Answer 5

RTextDoc

• Platforms: Windows, Mac OS, Linux (written in Java)
• License: Commercial with free demo version
• Languages: en, 14 other
• Syntax Highlighting: Yes
• Code Folding: Yes
• Spell Checking: Yes (20 languages)
• Grammar Checking: Yes (14 languages)
• Built-in Output Viewer: Yes
• Section structure viewer: Yes

This editor has a few features that can make it attractive: instant grammar checker, word look-up with more than 40 dictionaries and built-in graphics program based on PStricks. It also supports AsciiDOC syntax to write documents. Other features include:

• LaTeX → HTML converter
• HTML → LaTeX converter
• LaTeX → MathML/XML converter
• WYSIWYG Equation Editor and Bibliography database editor

Answer 6

Scribo

Available for: Mac
Open Source

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If you are looking for a beautifully designed LaTeX editor for Mac, you should try Scribo.
Although it's still in beta, it has a beautiful interface with a live outline of your document and a split-view. I am really anxious to see what it will become.

Also, I personally use TextMate and the LaTeX bundle for typesetting small files.

Answer 7

TechWriter

• Platforms: RISC OS
• License: Commercial
• Languages: en/de
• Unicode: ???
• RTL/bidirectional support: Yes
• % !TeX directives: No
• Syntax highlighting: No
• Code completion: No
• Code folding: No
• Spell checking: Yes
• SyncTeX: No
• Built-in output viewer: Yes (WYSIWYG)
• Project management: ???

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• WYSIWYG Editing
• Multi language spell check: {en, es, it, pt, fr, de, nl, no, da, fi, se, is}
• LaTex export
• PDF export
• HTML + CSS export
• Postscript export
• Word (.doc / .docx) import / export
• ODT import
• RTF import
• CSV import
• Key shortcuts
• Smart indexing / references / footnotes
• image - drag and drop / placement
• auto save

Answer 8

TeXiFy-IDEA

TeXiFy-IDEA is a plugin for Jetbrains IDEs like IntelliJ and PyCharm (actively maintained).

GitHub: https://github.com/Hannah-Sten/TeXiFy-IDEA

JetBrains Plugin Repository: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9473-texify-idea/

List of features and documentation: https://github.com/Hannah-Sten/TeXiFy-IDEA/wiki/Features

• Platforms: Windows, macOS and Linux
• License: TeXiFy-IDEA is MIT licensed, IntelliJ Community is licensed under Apache-2.0 and free for commercial use
• Languages: English
• Unicode: Yes, uses multi-stage educated guessing for the file encoding
• RTL/bidirectional support: Yes, can automatically detect content-based
• % !TeX directives: Yes
• Syntax highlighting: Yes, customisable
• Code completion: Yes, including user-defined commands and smart completion based on user behaviour
• Code folding: Yes
• Spell checking: Yes, as well as grammar checking using the Grazie plugin
• SyncTeX: Yes
• Built-in output viewer: Yes, plus support for Evince, SumatraPDF, Skim, Okular, and Zathura
• Project management: Yes

Other features:

• Autocomplete of labels, (custom defined) commands and environments
• Writer ergonomics - writing LaTeX made less cumbersome
• Compiler support for pdfLaTeX, LuaTeX, Latexmk, texliveonfly, XeLaTeX, bibtex, and biber
• Inspections. Intentions. And heaps more inspections.
• Refactorings - extract long sections/chapters to new files and automatically \input them.
• Full BibTeX support
• Formatter for LaTeX and BibTeX
• Structure view for LaTeX and BibTeX with filters
• Code folding for imports, sections, and environments
• SumatraPDF support with forward and backward search
• Unicode math preview
• Equation preview
• Gutter icons for quick compilation and file includes
• Fancy icons that fit in with the IntelliJ style
• Brace matching
• Word counting tool
• File templates for .tex, .sty, .cls and .bib files
• Automagically import packages of common commands
• Go to declaration of labels, jump to \include'd documents, jump to bibliography entries.
• Shortcuts for styling text
• Line commenter
• Support for user-created document classes and packages
• Toggle star action

Answer 9

Scientific WorkPlace

Was available for: Windows
Commercial

Platforms: Microsoft Windows® NT 4.0, or Windows® 98, Me, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows® 7 or later or Apple Macintosh® running an emulator program such as Virtual PC™, Parallels, or the free Virtual Box running a version of Windows® listed above

License: was commercial, US$810.00

Spell Checking: could be purchased separately

It had MuPAD as built-in computer algebra system, is described here.

The company behind Scientific Workplace, MacKichan Software, Inc., went out of business July 1, 2021. The details are reported in the item on Scientific Word, q.v.

(barbara beaton via comment)

Answer 10

Verbosus (a.k.a VerbTeX for Android/iOS/Windows 8)

• Platforms: Android, iOS, Windows 8 (modern UI), Browser

• License: Free (limited version), Paid (full version)

• Languages: en (Android/iOS/Windows 8/Browser), de (Android/Browser), fr (Browser)

• Unicode: Yes

• Syntax highlighting: Yes

• Code completion: Yes (Browser), No (Android/iOS/Windows 8)

• Code folding: No

• Spell checking: Yes (Android/iOS/Windows 8/Browser: Depending on your preferences)

• SyncTeX: No

• Built-in output viewer: Yes (Browser: if you use a browser like Chrome which has an integrated viewer), No (Android/iOS/Windows 8)

• Project management: Yes

• Collaboration: Yes (Android/Browser), No (iOS/Windows 8)

Answer 11

Scientific Word

• Platforms: Windows
• License: Commercial

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Same as Scientific WorkPlace, but without the computer algebra system, and now for free.

The company behind this software is MacKichan Software, Inc., and went out of business on July 1, 2021 (http://www.mackichan.com/index.html?products/sw.html~mainFrame):

Sales have ceased for Scientific WorkPlace, Scientific Word, and Scientific Notebook

MacKichan Software, Inc., after providing word processing software for those who speak the language of mathematics for forty years (under several names), closed its doors on June 30, 2021. This marks the end of sales and support for the MacKichan Software products.

All owners of Scientific WorkPlace, Scientific Word, or Scientific Notebook should have a serial number that was included in their purchase. This number is also included in the license file for your installation as the last line in the file. If you need to install your software on a new or different computer, you will need to re-activate the software on that computer using that serial number. The software can be activated as before, using the Help/Activate menu item. This contacts the MacKichan Software licensing server, which we will keep running for at least two years.

Thirty-day trials of all of our products are discontinued. Trial serial numbers will no longer work to activate the software.

Sites with permanent site licenses will, of course, be free to use Scientific WorkPlace, Scientific Word, and/or Scientific Notebook as long as they like. Those sites that have paid for maintenance with home-use satellite licenses can continue, but will be unable to create new satellite licenses after their maintenance agreement expires.

We expect to make Scientific Word an open source product eventually. Since both Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Notebook contain the proprietary computer algebra system MuPAD, they cannot be made open source. When the open source project for Scientific Word is established, an announcement will be made here.

We hope to make version 5.5 of Scientific Word available in the future. It currently contains several components that are licensed and not owned by MacKichan Software. These components need to be removed, and our intention is then to make Scientific Word version 5.5 open source.

Barry MacKichan President MacKichan Software, Inc.

July 1, 2021

The latest released version of these products is 6.1.2. To update your program to the latest release, click here. The same page also contains links to the installers for version 5.5 and the manuals for versions 5.5 and 6.

Answer 12

Scribes

• Available for: Linux
• Free & Open source
• Unicode: Yes
• RTL/BiDi: Yes
• Custom BG/syntax highlighting: Yes (GTK)
• Best feature: customizable templates/snippets (great for quick insertion of figure/table/listing environments, inserting non-ASCII characters for XeTeX users, etc)

Answer 13

Compositor

• Platforms: Mac OS 10.11+
• License: US$ 20
• Languages: en
• Unicode: Yes
• RTL/bidi: ?
• % !TEX directives: ?
• Syntax Highlighting: ?
• Code Completion: ?
• Code Folding: ?
• Spell Checking: ?
• SyncTeX: ?
• Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, supports PDF, DVI
• Project Management: ?
• Autosave: Yes
• Line Spacing: Yes

Compositor is a WYSIWYG LaTeX editor for Mac.

The DVI Viewer Is The New Editor

In a traditional LaTeX workflow, you would edit the LaTeX source in a text editor, compile the document every now and then, and check the effects of your changes in the DVI viewer.

In Compositor, the DVI viewer is the document editor — you type directly in the rendered document, and every keystroke is immediately reflected. The source editing and compilation steps are completely eliminated from the workflow.

This not just gives you immediate visual feedback, it should also save you quite some time previously spent on compilation runs.

Source Editing When You Need It

There will be situations where you want direct access to the underlying LaTeX source.

Pressing Ctrl+S will open an inline source editor showing the LaTeX source behind the document region you're currently working on (often this will be the current paragraph).

This should allow for a smooth migration experience to this new paradigm, even with commands or environments for which there is no dedicated graphical inspector (yet).

Automatic Package Installation

If your document uses LaTeX packages not bundled with the app, they are automatically downloaded from CTAN.

And if you are using packages not available on CTAN, you can still provide them to the app easily.

Video of functionality

Answer 14

DMelt

• Platforms: All Java enabled platforms (Window, Linux, Mac, Sun)

• License: Free

• Languages: en

• Unicode: Yes

• Syntax highlighting: Yes

• Code completion: Only for macros to generate images

• Code folding: No

• Spell checking: Yes (Using Open-office dictionaries)

• SyncTeX: Yes

• Built-in output viewer: Configurable using scripts

• Additional features to edit LaTeX files: Integrated structure view, LaTeX tool to insert latex commands, BibTex manager.

This IDE goes much beyond editing LaTeX files. It is an environment for scientific computation, data analysis and data visualization. You can plot functions, perform a data-analysis with histograms and arrays, do data mining, statistical calculations. Symbolic mathematical calculations are also supported. A lot of tools for matrix calculations. Data can be shown in 2D and 3D. SCaVis can generate vector-graphics images that can be inserted to the LaTeX documents. The program is written in Java.

Answer 15

jEdit

• Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8, OS X, Linux (Slackware, Debian). Should work on any platform with a Java VM.
• License: GPL
• Languages: en, cz de, fr, ja, ru, zh
• Unicode: Yes
• RTL/bidi: No
• % !TEX directives: No
• Syntax Highlighting: Yes, regex-based (including .bib)
• Code Completion: Via plugin
• Code Folding: Yes
• Spell Checking: Via plugin or macro (using Aspell either way)
• SyncTeX: No
• Built-in Output Viewer: No
• Project Management: No
• Autosave: Yes

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Screenshot of jEdit on Windows (font is 'hack'): Linux looks very similar:

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On Windows and Linux, I use jEdit. TeX support for command insertion, compilation, Aspell etc. is provided via macros, though I tend to use the command line for compilation anyway.

I have a strong preference for cross-platform, general-purpose tools, so choose a text editor rather than a TeX-specific IDE.

Answer 16

Open LaTeX Studio

• Platforms: Windows, Linux
• License: Open source/free
• Syntax Highlighting: Yes
• Code Completion: Yes
• Spell Checking: Yes
• Built-in Output Viewer: Yes

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Other pros:

• Remote collaboration through DropBox
• Document templates

Answer 17

Archimedes

Available for: Mac OS X
Commercial - $4.99 on Mac App Store

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Archimedes is a LaTeX and Markdown editor designed from the ground-up for Mac OS X. It does not require an external TeX installation and includes innovative features like Magic Type, which allows users to insert mathematical symbols simply by drawing them on their MacBook's trackpad or Magic Trackpad.

Features (copied from the website):

Markdown Editing

At its core, Archimedes is a fully-featured plain text and Markdown editor. It includes a fast syntax highlighter and provides convenient keyboard shortcuts for common actions, such as inserting images and links. With complete support for Markdown, Archimedes makes formatting and structuring documents elegant and easy.

Math Mode + Autocomplete

In Math Mode, Archimedes lets you write mathematics in a subset of LaTeX. Just enter $$ to get started. Over 700 intuitive commands, such as \sqrt{a^2 + b^2}, help you produce stunning mathematical output. Archimedes even autocompletes commands and intelligently matches closing braces, brackets, and parenthesis as you type.

Magic Type

Just getting started with LaTeX? Don't know the code for the asymptotically equal symbol? Use your MacBook's trackpad or Magic Trackpad to draw it! Archimedes will recognize the symbol and insert the corresponding code for you.

Live Preview

As you work, a beautifully-typeset live preview of your document is always visible. You can even switch between horizontal or vertical orientation and select a custom theme.

Math Library

Browse the math library to see all available LaTeX commands and their previews in one place.

Macros

Archimedes lets you define macros -- or custom commands -- for the expressions you work with the most. Macros show up in autocompletion results right alongside built-in completions.

Navigator

Working on a long document? Use the Navigator to pull up a table of contents and quickly jump between sections.

Sharing

Share your work with the rest of the world via email, iMessage or AirDrop. Or export a PDF or HTML document to disk.

Answer 18

I tend to use jove "Jonathon's Own Version of Emacs" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOVE for history, downloads at ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/cs/ftp/pub/hugh/jove-dev/) which gives a very compact emacs-like editor for Windows, without the vast overhead of an emacs environment.

I use a secondary cmd window to invoke texify (MikTeX), though I presume jove could set up a macro to do it. In the image below, my editing window is upper left, the cmd window is lower left and the DVI (or PDF) window is on the right.

Answer 19

TeXpen

http://sf.net/p/texpen

Linux/Win/Mac

• Auto-completion
• Highlighting
• Themes
• One-Click compiling
• Realtime Equation preview
• Built-in PDF preview
• ... ...

Answer 20

Winefish

• Platforms: Linux
• License: GPL
• Unicode: Yes
• RTL/bidi: ?
• % !TEX directives: ?
• Syntax Highlighting: Customizable
• Code Completion: Yes
• Code Folding: No
• Spell Checking: Yes
• SyncTeX: No
• Built-in Output Viewer: No
• Project Management: Yes
• Autosave: ?
• Line Spacing: ?

A LaTeX Editor for Experienced Users.

Answer 21

Texiteasy is a great latex editor that is not on this list.

http://texiteasy.com/

It allows easy macro support. From the website, other features are:

Other Features

• Syntax coloration
• Command completion (with commands defined in the source, \ref your \label, \cite your bibitem and bibfile)
• Integrated pdf viewer (auto sync during scrolling, reverse sync with Ctrl+Click on the pdf)
• Spell checker
• Hide auxilary files
• Search with regex
• Quickly open associted files (input, bibliography)
• Autodetect the master file (if it is open)
• Restore last session
• Configure multiple builders
• Configure keybinding and themes
• Split the editor in two parts

Answer 22

Reading TUGboat, Volume 37 (2016), No. 3 275 I saw that there is LaTeX Base, with the following features:

• live, compile-as-you-type document preview,
• one-click document publishing and sharing,
• offline mode,
• integrations with file storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox,
• syntax highlighting,
• and (the very interesting) familiar keyboard shortcuts for Vim and Emacs users.

Unfortunately, if I have understood well, only the online editor for short documents is free.

Answer 23

IntelliJ IDEA with LaTeX plugin (unmaintained)

• Platforms: Linux, Windows, MacOSX
• License: MIT
• Unicode: Yes
• RTL/bidi: No (until IDEA-57251 is solved)
• % !TEX directives: No
• Syntax Highlighting: Yes
• Code Completion: No
• Code Folding: No
• Spell Checking: Yes - with the RedPen plugin
• SyncTeX: Yes (as soon as IDEA-159739) is solved)
• Built-in Output Viewer: No
• Project Management: Yes
• Autosave: Yes
• Line Spacing: Yes

An IntelliJ plugin joining the features of IntelliJ with LaTeX.

Answer 24

Rstudio Desktop

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This is text editor mainly focused in help with the R statistical language, but allow edit and compile .tex files, and more importantly, Sweave/knitr (.Rnw), markdown (.md) and Rmarkdown (.Rmd), that can be compiled as LaTeX file.

Assistance to write LaTeX code is limited to a few basic commands ({\section}, etc.) in .tex files and absent in other files, but in Rmarkdown can show previews of math environments, preview of images included with Rmarkdown (e.g.: ![caption](image.jpg)) and a very useful clickable outline pane for fond documents. This allow to write very easily simple LateX files, but also complex files since you can also include any LaTeX command or environment (e.g. \begin{figure}...\begin{figure}) in Rmarkdown text, as well as R code chunks, surpassing the limitations of the three languages. Write markdown+LateX-R s without doubt for me the major advantage of this editor, so, for instance, you can write some as:

This is *nearly* a \TeX\ `r pi`  document.

And obtain a PDF produced in pdflatex with:

This is nearly a TEX 3.1415927 document.

"Nearly" because R do not supply the pi constant with enough digits for this example, but that snippet complete document show that is using markdown code (in *nearly*), TeX code (in \TeX\) and R code (in r pi).

• Platforms: Linux (Debian,Ubuntu,Fedora,OpenSUSE), Windows, Mac OS X.
• License: AGPL v3
• Unicode: Yes
• Syntax highlighting: Yes
• Spell checking: Yes (but not live spellcheck)
• Built-in output viewer: Yes
• Project management: Yes

Answer 25

Auto-Latex Equations add-on for Google Docs

• Note: Provides LaTeX equations inside Google Docs, not a full LaTeX document editor
• Platforms: Browser-based
• License: Free
• Languages: All due to Google Docs integration
• Version Control: Yes, auto-saves all past versions with revision history

For all math equations typeset in MathJax/LaTeX, the Auto-Latex Equations add-on for Google Docs is free and works at a high quality. By replacing all your equations with images of the high-quality equation, it's mobile-viewable and fully compatible with Google Docs image tools.

Equations in delimiters can be rendered in super high quality at whatever time you like by rendering all the equations in your document. If you mess up, you can always undo one (or all), edit it, then re-render.

You can get it for free at the Google Docs add-ons store.

Answer 26

Texifier

Another proposal of editor currently only, actually, for the MAC OS version is available is named Texifier: https://www.texifier.com/mac

Answer 27

ScienHub - AI-empowered Scientific Collaboration

• Platforms: Online
• License: Free and paid
• Compilation: pdfLaTeX, ...
• *Unicode: Yes
• Syntax highlighting: Yes
• Code folding: Yes
• Built-in Output Viewer: Yes
• AI support: Yes, for rephrasing

Dark mode:

Light mode:

AI rephrase support: