TeXFlow

Write LaTeX, without writing LaTeX.

TeXFlow is a visual editor for real LaTeX files inside VS Code. It lets you focus on writing while keeping your .tex files intact, editable, and fully accessible.

Current stable release: 0.17.0.

TeXFlow does not replace LaTeX with a proprietary format. Your .tex file remains the source of truth. When TeXFlow cannot safely edit a complex construct visually, it preserves the underlying LaTeX rather than silently rewriting it.

Highlights

• Visual editing for article, report, book, and Beamer documents.
• Semantic paragraphs, headings, lists, and document structure.
• Bold, italic, underline, color, and paragraph alignment.
• Inline and display mathematics, equations, align, gather, multline, cases, and matrices.
• Citations, bibliography workflows, labels, and cross-references.
• Figures with captions, labels, resize, rotation, and subfigures.
• Tables with row/column editing, alignment, captions, labels, Booktabs, and CSV/TSV import.
• Document spacing, local columns, document settings, and raw preamble access.
• Beamer frames, blocks, columns, frame options, and improved paragraph persistence.
• Copy, cut, paste, duplicate, and move selected semantic objects.
• Visual, Source, Split, and PDF workflows.
• Local spell checking with English and Spanish dictionaries.
• Automatic, English, and Español language modes for spell checking.
• Conservative preservation of unsupported LaTeX.
• Start from TeXFlow — create a standalone .tex file or a LaTeX project directly from the TeXFlow sidebar.
• Project navigator — browse relevant .tex, .bib, and figure files without leaving TeXFlow.

Installation

Visual Studio Marketplace

Install TeXFlow — Visual LaTeX from the VS Code Extensions view, or use the Marketplace listing:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=leandrozipitria.texflow

Install from VSIX

1. Download the .vsix from the GitHub release.
2. In VS Code, open the Extensions view.
3. Choose Install from VSIX....
4. Select the TeXFlow package.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.90 or newer.
• A working local LaTeX distribution such as TeX Live or MiKTeX.
• The tools required by your document, for example latexmk, bibtex, or biber when applicable.

Quick start

Quick start

1. Open TeXFlow from the VS Code Activity Bar.
2. Choose New document or Open existing .tex.
3. For a new document, create either:
   • a standalone .tex file; or
   • a LaTeX project with main.tex, preamble.tex, and figures/.
4. Choose article, report, book, or Beamer.
5. Edit in Visual mode, or switch between Visual, Source, Split, and PDF.
6. Compile with your local LaTeX toolchain.

You can also right-click a folder in the VS Code Explorer to create a TeXFlow document there, or right-click a .tex file to open it with TeXFlow.

Documentation

• User Manual
• Troubleshooting
• Development and architecture
• Roadmap
• Changelog

Design principle

TeXFlow is intentionally conservative. Visual editing is used where the source can be parsed and serialized safely. Unsupported or highly customized LaTeX is preserved so that opening a document in TeXFlow does not require converting it to another document format.

LyX is used only as a technical reference for structural-editing problems that mature LaTeX editors have already confronted, such as paragraph semantics, embedded objects, cursor boundaries, and source preservation. TeXFlow's interface and visual editors are independent product decisions.

Development

npm ci
npm run compile

Run the regression fixtures with:

bash tests/run_fixtures.sh

See CONTRIBUTING.md for contribution guidelines.

Author and development approach

Created by Leandro Zipitria.

TeXFlow was designed and developed through an iterative human–AI collaboration. The product concept, design decisions, testing, and development direction are by Leandro Zipitria. Implementation code was generated with OpenAI's ChatGPT under the creator's direction and testing.

Repository

https://github.com/LeandroZipitria/texflow

License

MIT. See LICENSE.