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faq.html gettinghelp.html-->Aug 04, 2021 Download the latest version of LaTeXiT for Mac for free. Read 27 user reviews and compare with similar apps on MacUpdate. A library of over 125,000 free and free-to-try software applications for Mac OS ( Page 29). Latest Mac Downloads filter: all. There are more than 10 alternatives to LaTeXiT for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Online / Web-based and iPad. The best alternative is KLatexFormula, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like LaTeXiT are TexMaths (Free, Open Source), MathType (Paid), EqualX (Free, Open Source) and Apache OpenOffice Math.
| To obtain the distribution, click the link below. | |||
| All install packages are developer-signed and notarized by Apple. | |||
| While downloading, please skim read the rest of the page. | |||
| Users who run into trouble often write us without noticing that the solution is on this very page. | |||
| MacTeX-2021 requires macOS 10.14, 10.15, or 11 | |||
| Mojave, Catalina, or Big Sur | |||
| and runs natively on both Arm and Intel machines. MacTeX.pkg [ approximately 4.4G - 29 March 2021] The MD5 sum is 327168dcc3036603eccce226cb7fadf9 The SHA256 sum is e541257d70f911550341853709fc45d9fa9fcd4c93058382000ebb19b284833b The SHA512 sum is 05d6e46347feb07bd9fed8ff1bfa855059a8fcf2c452fd832e0db1e15b5c171a2f86b5b911c37166dd19cfaba4f6e7fa4ea9f46c322f87f02f2b411bd1c54852 Download with Safari strongly recommended | |||
Installing MacTeX All binaries in MacTeX-2021 are universal, with code for both Arm and Intel processors. The same source code is used to compile both types of code, so Apple's Arm and Intel machines are on exactly the same footing. After downloading, move the file MacTeX.pkg to the desktop or another convenient spot,and double click it to install. Follow the straightforward instructions. Installation on a recent Macintoshtakes about ten minutes. When installation is complete, go to /Applications/TeX and read the documentREAD ME FIRST installed there, which explains how to find and use LaTeX. A copy of this document is availablehere. The installer presents a Welcome page. Then it presents a ReadMe page with more information.It presents a Software License page, and then a Final Page; clicking the 'Install' button on this page will start the actual installation. The final page also has a 'Customize' button, which leads to a panel allowing users to decide which pieces to install: Ghostscript, the Ghostscript Library, the GUI applications, and TeX Live itself. Most users will take the standard installation and ignore 'Customize'. Users who use MacPorts or HomeBrew may prefer to use the Ghostscript provided by these projects; if so they should use 'Customize' to disable Ghostscript installation. At the end of installation, the installer will report 'Success.' But sometimes, the installer puts up a dialog saying 'Verifying...' and then the install hangs. In all cases known to us, rebooting the Macintosh fixes this problem. After the reboot, install again. If other problems are reported during installation, skip to the section 'Installation Errors' below. MacTeX writes a symbolic link /Library/TeX/texbin which indirectly points to the TeX Live binary directory. Configure your GUI programs to use this link. The GUI programs we supply should automatically configure themselves. On older systems, you may have seen the link /usr/texbinwhich did the same thing. When Apple produced El Capitan, they modified the system so users could no longer write directly to the /usr directory and this rule remains in effect today. Therefore we replaced /usr/texbin with /Library/TeX/texbin. MacTeX installs TeX Live, the actual TeX Distribution, in /usr/local/texlive/2021, a location often hidden in the Finder. Typical users access TeX using a 'front end', a program providing an editor to enter TeX source and a preview window to view the typeset output. MacTeX installs the front end TeXShop in /Applications/TeX and most people will access TeX using that front end or a similar one. MacTeX installs a file called READ-ME-FIRST in ``/Applications/TeX/Docs and Spell Utilities'. This file explains how to start TeXShop and enter and then typeset a short sample document. MacTeX does not overwrite the TeX Distribution from the previous year. Users who run into trouble can switch to the previous distribution until the new distribution is fixed. Long ago we installed a Preference Pane which could do this switching, but this functionality is now in TeX Live Utility, which should be in /Applications/TeX. To switch, use the Configure menu item 'Select Default TeX Live Version.' MacTeX completely configures TeX, so after installationit is ready to use. Go to '/Applications/TeX/Docs and Spell Utilities/READ ME FIRST.pdf' and read this short document to get started. The location '/Applications/TeX/Docs and Spell Utilities/Documents' also contains 'What is installed', which lists all the components of MacTeX and their installation locations. MacTeX installs TeX Live, which contains TeX, LaTeX, AMS-TeX, and virtually every TeX-related style file and font. TeX Live is maintained by TeX User Groups across the world.TeX Live is compiled from the same sources for all platforms: Macintosh, Windows, Linux, Unix. MacTeX also installs the GUI programsTeXShop, LaTeXiT, TeX Live Utility, and BibDesk. MacTeX installs Ghostscript, an open source version of Postscript. An optional package installs libgs, the dynamical library for Ghostscript. That library is used by only one program in TeX Live, dvisvgm. So it is not installed by default, but can be obtained using the ``custom install' option in MacTeX. X11 is an open source windowing system using by Linux machines. Most Macintosh users can ignore it.An open source version of X11 called XQuartz is available for the Macintosh. It can be found here. If you use X11, you should update to the latest version of XQuartz, 2.8.0. This is particularly important for users with Arm machines. If you installed MacTeX before upgrading XQuartz, just install the Ghostscript piece again. The TeX Live programs xdvi, pdfopen, and pdfclose require X11. In addition, the Ghostscript library libgs requires X11 (but notice that dvisvgm is the only TeX Live program using it). Ghostscript comes with two binaries, gs-X11 and gs-noX11, where gs-X11 has support for X11 and gs-noX11 does not. When Ghostscript is first installed, a symbolic link named gs is created in /usr/local/bin. If X11 is present, gs points to gs-X11; otherwise it points to gs-noX11. On Arm machines, gs points to gs-X11 only if XQuartz 2.8.0 or higher is present. | |||
here In almost all cases, this error is caused by a faulty download. There is an easy way to check this. Go to /Applications/Utilities and run Terminal. Type
If you are having trouble downloading MacTeX, note that the download link points to a 'multiplexer' site which parcels out requests to various up-to-date CTAN mirrors. Occasionally users have trouble getting the package from this multiplexer. In that case, choose a specific mirror on this mirror page. If you are still unable to download MacTeX-2021 after trying several specific mirrors, and your md5 sum is always incorrect, there is almost nothing we can do to help. The TeX User Group does not run the distribution servers; they are maintained by an entirely separate organization called CTAN. Complaining to us that your download always fails is a waste of time. Updating Various Pieces After Installation A small number of users like to keep several versions of TeX Live available, even when they buy a new computer running the latest macOS. This is certainly possible because older versions of TeX Live continue to work on new systems, and versions containing only Intel code run fine on Arm machines. The old version can be installed on the new computer by copying it from an older machine, or byobtaining it from CTAN. For details, visit the web page . There is one complication. TeX Live Utility can update an old distribution to the version just before that version was retired. But this will fail for TeX Live 2019 or older versions, if installed on Big Sur or later versions of macOS. The reason is that TeX Live Utility calls the program tlmgr in the older distribution, and this program depends on various utilities in that older distribution. One of these utilities determines the operating system being run and expects a number starting with 10, like 10.5, 10.7, or 10.13. But Big Sur returns a number starting with 11. This bug was discovered and fixed in TeX Live 2020 within a week of the initial first beta of Big Sur in June, 2020, and thus long before the release of Big Sur to the public. But TUG does not fix bugs in older versions of TeX Live.Sometimes at the end of installation, the installer will report 'The installation failedThe Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.'and a space. Then drag the install package icon 'MacTeX.pkg' and drop it on the Terminal window.Push RETURN. Terminal will print a message and then a long item with letters and numbers.Compare this number to the MD5 sum at the top of this page just under the MacTeX.pkg link.If the two numbers are different, your download was defective and you download again.If you downloaded with a third party browser, we recommend trying Safari for the new download.TeX Live 2021 and the various GUI programs installed by MacTeX are up to date as of April, 2021. But various pieces may have been updated since then. Each of our GUI programs has a menu item called 'Check for Updates.' Select this item to update the program to the current version. The TeX Live command line files are updated daily. To install these updates, use TeX Live Utility in /Applications/TeX.
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Note that i-Installer is unsupported as of Jan. 2007.
LaTeXit is shipped with with the (excellent) MacTeX package listed in my LaTeX on Mac OS X Howto. And that package sets your entire environment up to use TeX right away. It also comes with other great TeX tools.
I can vouch, since that howto was written in LaTeX on a Mac. :-)
LaTeXiT 1.14.4 (for Tiger) works fine for me under Leopard. No troubles at all typesetting equations in LaTeX and no crashing.
This seems odd- on the LaTexIt web page Pierre acknowledges a problem on Leopard for the current version 1.14.4 but apparently has not installed it himself yet so has not had a chance to fix it. On my systems (a G4 and a G5), it is slow to load and I get an infinite beachball cursor when I try to format anything. I tried tinkering with the paths to the command line tools but that has not helped so far. I am curious if it is working for someone- is it on an Intel machine?
Yes, this is on Intel - MacBook v1.1 to be specific.
I don't use LaTeXiT much (once every month maybe) buy my quick testing now didn't show any problems at all. MacTex-2007 is installed and all GUI-programs (TexShop, LaTeXiT, BibDesk and Excalibur) updated to latest versions manually. I use TexShop, BibDesk and Excalibur daily and no problems with any of them.
LaTexit works for me too under Leopard. If you do an archive and install for Leopard, then you need to re-install the Tex engine, as it is part of the system files which get wiped. IMHO the Mac-Texlive installation is the way to go now (I used the i-installer before, but as remarked it is no longer supported).
Mac Download Folder
Well I have done this- TeXShop and BibDesk work just fine, but LaTeXIt is not. I have the same issue on 2 ppc Macs. Are you on an Intel Mac? Perhaps there is a permissions thing somewhere...
It turns out that there is a bug in 1.14.4, but the previous version (1.14.3) works fine in Leopard until Pierre issues a fix [Thanks to R. Koch for the pointer]. In my testing it seems that LinkBack works OK but using the LaTeXiT via the Services menu does not at the moment.
Assuming that you don't want to do what I did, you can fix the path LaTeXit uses to access pdftex. Go to the Composition tab of LaTeXit's preferences and use the Change... button for the pdfLaTeX path to see if the path is set correctly and to browse to the correct path if it is not. If you use the gwTeX distribution, the path should be somewhere inside /usr/local/gwTeX. If you use the MacTeX distribution, the path is in /usr/local/texlive. In my case (G4 laptop, MacTeX distribution), the full path is /usr/local/texlive/2007/bin/powerpc-darwin/pdflatex, but /usr/texbin/pdflatex works also because there is an alias in /texbin. If you use Fink, the path would be somewhere in /sw.
If you still haven't fixed it, you can also try the TeX on Mac mailing list (go to http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/ to sign up, http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/ to see the archives). If they help you, please post back here.
Sweet article you put together there.
My LaTeXiT works in Leopard, but not from within apps like Pages (via the Services Menu). When text i selected then I choose an option in LaTeXiT from the Services menu it will open LaTeXiT but won't insert the image. I tried reinstalling the MacTex package, but no luck.
I'm on a 1.33 GHz PowerPC 12' Powerbook and I did a regular upgrade of Leopard last week.
Any ideas?
There is actually a much easier workaround: simply change your /etc/profile commenting the following lines (add the '#' at the begining):
# if [ -x /usr/libexec/path_helper ]; then
# eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`
# fi
and adding the following two:
PATH='/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin'
export PATH
Why so? Apple changed the Leopard way to set the PATH variable, and now it uses the /usr/libexec/path_helper command, which seems having troubles with LaTeXiT spawned bash scripts. If you make this modification to your /etc/profile, you are simply dropping the new path_helper in favour of the plain old way to set the PATH variable.
This also explain why some people says 'on my mac it works fine': they already have a customized /etc/profile and they made an upgrade from 10.4 to 10.5, and upgrade installs don't change modified system files (looks so).
Mac Downloader
I was having the same problem on my laptop when I installed Leopard, but not on my desktop, and I didn't change /etc/profile on either. Further investigation (with the help of your comment) showed that the problem was that I had /opt/local/bin at the start of my PATH in my ~/.profile file on the laptop (this is what MacPorts suggests as a default), while on my desktop I had previously decided this was a bad idea, and put it at the end of my PATH variable.
Putting /opt/local/bin after the standard PATH in my ~/.profile file on the laptop fixed the problem (after logging out). It seems that /usr/libexec/path_helper reads the ~/.profile file, and I believe the reason your fix corrected the problem was that it basically amounted to putting /opt/local/bin after /bin, /usr/bin, etc.
Cheers,
Graham
This is indeed the way to fix things.
I had the same issue: /usr/libexec/path_helper -s was freezing and using 100% CPU when starting LaTeX*It. (never seen this before on 10.5)
I found that I couldn't even kill it easily (it took a kill -9 to make it die). However, once I killed it, latexit continued to load and seemed to work fine.
EXCELLENT!
Tried this solution and now LaTeXiT is working again!
Thanks dude!
jflelstrom, did you get it to work?
For me Latexit service works in some apps but not in others. Not pages for example. Latexitstarts, but nothing gets pasted in.
I don't know much about these things, but my suspicion is that it has something to do with cocoa or carbon. Latexit service works in InDesign and some other Adobe apps which are carbon, I think. It does not seem to work in cocoa apps.
Any idea?
Latexit Mac Downloads
I now have LaTeXit working, due to the LaTeXit update they released recently. Works via services in Pages and Keynote, so I'm good to go! Thanks for the help.