The Copy-Paste Loop That Was Eating My Time
Here's my old workflow for getting equations from handwritten notes into LaTeX:
- Open Mathpix Snip
- Take a screenshot of the equation
- Wait for recognition
- Copy the LaTeX code
- Switch back to my editor
- Paste
- Compile to verify
- Repeat 30-40 times per day
Each cycle takes maybe 20 seconds. Multiply that by 40 and you're losing 13+ minutes a day just on the mechanical act of moving text between two apps. But the real cost isn't time — it's the constant context switching. Every time I left my editor to grab Mathpix, I'd lose my place in the document. "Wait, was I working on equation 3.7 or 3.8?"
I used Mathpix for about two years. The OCR quality is excellent, no complaints there. But I started wondering: why does equation OCR have to be a separate application?
What I Actually Wanted
When I searched for "mathpix alternative," the results were all standalone OCR tools: Pix2Text (open-source Python library), SmartSnip, GrabText. They solve the pricing problem but not the workflow problem. You still end up copying LaTeX code from one window and pasting it into another.
What I actually wanted was an editor where I could paste an image of an equation and get LaTeX code inserted directly into my document. No app switching. No clipboard juggling.
Finding TeX64
I came across TeX64 while browsing a thread about LaTeX setups on Mac. It's a local-first LaTeX editor for macOS with equation OCR built right into the editor. You can download it from tex64.com — there's a free tier and you don't need to create an account to start using it.
The OCR workflow is dead simple:
- Screenshot an equation (or photograph handwritten notes)
- Paste the image into TeX64
- The equation gets converted to LaTeX and inserted at your cursor position
That's it. No app switching. No copy-paste. The recognized LaTeX code appears right where you're editing, ready to compile.
How the OCR Actually Performs
I've been using it for about a month now, so here's my honest assessment:
Printed equations from textbooks/PDFs: Near-perfect. I've thrown multi-line align environments, matrices, and nested fractions at it, and it handles them well. Maybe 1 in 20 needs a minor fix.
Clean handwriting: Good. If you write legibly on a whiteboard or clean paper, recognition is solid. Subscripts and superscripts occasionally need adjustment.
Messy handwriting: Passable. My own handwriting is not great, and complex expressions sometimes come back garbled. But even a 70% accurate starting point is faster than typing from scratch.
PDF equations: Excellent. If the source PDF has clean typesetting (which most published papers do), the conversion is essentially lossless.
The big difference isn't recognition accuracy — Mathpix is arguably just as accurate or slightly better on edge cases. The difference is that I never leave my editor. Over 40 conversions per day, eliminating those context switches adds up to a genuinely different experience.
The Features I Didn't Expect to Love
I installed TeX64 specifically for the OCR. But the editor itself turned out to be surprisingly capable, and a few features have become part of my daily workflow:
Axiom (AI Assistant)
TeX64 has an AI assistant called Axiom that reads your entire project — all your .tex files, compile logs, even your BibTeX. When you hit a compile error, Axiom analyzes the log and proposes a fix as a diff. You review the change, click to apply, and you're done.
Last week I had a mysterious Missing $ inserted error buried 200 lines after the actual mistake (a stray _ outside math mode). Axiom found it in about 3 seconds. I would have spent 10 minutes hunting for that.
It can also search arXiv and insert BibTeX entries, which is handy during literature review phases.
Visual Math Palette
A clickable symbol palette for building equations. You select symbols and operators, see the rendered output in real time, and get clean LaTeX code inserted into your document. Great for those moments when you can't remember the exact command for \underbrace or \overset.
SyncTeX
Click a spot in the PDF → jump to the corresponding line in your source. Click in the source → jump to the PDF location. Bidirectional navigation. Essential for long documents.
Everything Runs Locally
All compilation happens on your Mac. No internet required. No server compile queues. My 120-page thesis compiles in about 8 seconds on an M2 MacBook Air. If the Wi-Fi goes down at the coffee shop, I don't even notice.
The Honest Downsides
macOS only. If you use Windows or Linux, this isn't an option. Full stop.
Requires TeX Live or MacTeX. TeX64 is an editor, not a TeX distribution. You need a working LaTeX installation on your Mac first. If you already have one (most Mac LaTeX users do), there's no extra setup. If you're starting from scratch, install MacTeX first.
Heavy OCR usage needs a paid plan. The free tier lets you try everything, but if you're doing 40+ OCR conversions per day like me, you'll want a paid plan. That said, you're getting a full LaTeX editor plus OCR plus AI assistance, which makes the value proposition different from paying for OCR alone.
No real-time collaboration. If you need Google Docs-style simultaneous editing, Overleaf is still the better choice. TeX64 is built for solo writing.
Who Should Consider This
If you check these boxes, TeX64 might be worth trying:
- You're on a Mac
- You write LaTeX regularly (thesis, papers, homework)
- You currently use Mathpix or similar OCR tools
- You're tired of the copy-paste workflow between OCR and your editor
- You prefer local compilation over cloud-based editors
If you're happy with Mathpix as a standalone tool and the copy-paste doesn't bother you, there's no urgent reason to switch. But if that workflow friction has been nagging at you, the integrated approach is a meaningful improvement.
TeX64: https://tex64.com
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