LaTeX Desk

All the LaTeX power, none of the setup, and no limits on how long your build can run.
Write, build, preview and submit LaTeX documents without leaving VS Code.

• Your machine, your rules. Builds run on your own TeX installation, so a 250-page thesis compiles as often as you like, with no queue, no timeout and no file-size cap.
• Nothing to configure. LaTeX Desk finds your main file, picks a recipe and opens the PDF beside the source on the first build.
• Private by design. Everything works offline, and your documents never leave your computer (privacy).

Write, save, see it

Save and the PDF rebuilds, keeping your place, and extra passes run only when they're needed. Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on macOS) anywhere in the PDF to jump to the line that produced it, or press Ctrl+Alt+J to go the other way.

Formatting without memorising commands

The LaTeX Tools bar gives you one-click bold, italic, alignment and text size, an equation builder and a searchable symbol palette. Buttons work as toggles: click Bold on \textbf{word} and it is plain again. If a button needs a package you haven't loaded, LaTeX Desk offers to add it.

Errors explained in plain English

Every error and warning appears in the Problems view with its file and line. The log viewer explains common ones: what went wrong, the usual causes and what to try. One click takes you to the line.

A bibliography you can trust

The Bib Manager checks every entry as you type: missing fields, broken DOIs, uncited and duplicate entries. It scores each entry for completeness and walks you through the fixes one at a time.

Tables without the ampersands

Put the cursor in a table and open the Table Wizard: edit cells in a grid, add or remove rows and columns, and set alignment, caption and label. You can also paste straight from a spreadsheet or import a CSV.

Ready to submit

Export for Submission packages only the files your document actually uses, adds the .bbl, can strip comments, and then compiles the copy in a clean folder. You know the upload works before you send it. Presets cover arXiv, journals and a full project ZIP.

Your project at a glance

The dashboard shows the build state, errors, bibliography health, word count, TODOs and anything blocking submission. The side bar lists your document's structure, files, citations, labels and history.

Hover over any formula to see it rendered, without building:

Getting started

1. Install a TeX distribution if you don't have one: MacTeX (macOS), MiKTeX or TeX Live (Windows), or TeX Live (Linux). Run LaTeX Desk: Check LaTeX Tools to confirm what was found.
2. Open the folder that contains your .tex files.
3. Open your main file and press Ctrl+Alt+B (Cmd+Alt+B on macOS). The PDF opens beside the source, and every save rebuilds it after that.

Starting fresh? LaTeX Desk: New LaTeX Project… asks a few quick questions (class, engine, bibliography, layout) and sets up a project that builds straight away.

Editing, completion and all the checks work without TeX installed; only building needs it. latexmk is used when present (it ships with all three distributions). Optional extras: latexindent or tex-fmt for formatting, latexdiff for change-tracked PDFs, texcount for a second word count.

LaTeX Desk finds the main document by itself. A % !TEX root = ../main.tex comment wins; otherwise it picks the file that has \documentclass and includes the file you are editing. If several documents qualify, it asks once. Select Root Document changes the choice later.

Everything included

Word counts and math previews are approximations and say so.

Keyboard shortcuts

Every command is in the Command Palette under LaTeX Desk. In the PDF, Ctrl+click (Cmd+click) jumps to the source; set latexdesk.viewer.reverseSyncClick to use double-click instead.

Settings

Settings are under LaTeX Desk in the Settings editor. The ones you are most likely to change:

"latexdesk.build.tools": [
  { "name": "glossaries", "command": "makeglossaries", "args": ["%DOC%"], "cwd": "%OUTDIR%" }
],
"latexdesk.build.recipes": [
  { "name": "pdflatex + glossaries", "tools": ["pdflatex", "glossaries", "pdflatex"] }
]

score = 70 × (share of required fields present)
      + 20 × (share of recommended fields present, per profile)
      + 10 × (1 − 0.25 × number of value problems, at least 0)

npx latexdesk-bibcheck references.bib --tex main.tex --profile strict --format sarif --fail-on warning

Known limitations

• Fast preview and partial builds need latexmk; partial builds work for \included files only.
• Not in this release: a visual (rich-text) editor, review comments and tracked changes, Zotero, online metadata lookup (DOI, arXiv) and real-time collaboration.
• Spell checking ships with English dictionaries; add others with latexdesk.spell.dictionaryPath. Language switches inside a document (\selectlanguage) and words with TeX accents (M\"uller) are not checked yet.
• Very large projects may notice indexing, which runs on the extension host thread (details).

Found a bug or missing feature? Open an issue.

Contributing

Want to work on LaTeX Desk itself? See the developer guide, README_DEV.md.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

The thesis in thesis/ (used only for testing in this repository, not shipped in the extension) is licensed separately under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; see thesis/LICENSE.

Included software and data

The command list, symbols, error explanations, snippets and BibTeX/BibLaTeX field tables in data/ and snippets/ were written for this project (the field tables follow the BibTeX and BibLaTeX documentation) and are under the project's MIT license.