I Stopped Retyping Textbook Equations. Here's the Workflow That Changed Everything

Let me describe a scenario that I'm guessing sounds familiar:

You're writing a paper or problem set in LaTeX. You flip to page 47 of your textbook and there's a derivation you need to reference — three lines of coupled differential equations, subscripts everywhere, a Jacobian matrix in the middle of it. You stare at it. You start typing \frac{\partial. You misplace a brace somewhere. You compile. Error on line 34. You spend four minutes figuring out that you wrote _{ij} instead of ^{ij} on the second term.

Sound familiar?

I did this for years before I found a better approach.

The Real Problem with Manual LaTeX Input

The issue isn't that LaTeX syntax is hard (though it is). The issue is that typing equations is not the work. Understanding the math is the work. Setting up the argument is the work. The actual keystrokes needed to render a Maxwell equation are pure mechanical overhead — and that overhead adds up to hours per week if you work with dense technical material.

For a while I tried Mathpix. The OCR accuracy is genuinely impressive. You screenshot an equation, it spits out clean LaTeX. But even with Mathpix, there's a friction tax: open the app, take the screenshot, copy the output, switch back to your editor, paste it in. And when the OCR makes a small mistake, you're debugging with no help.

I kept thinking: there should be a way to do this inside the editor.

Enter TeX64

TeX64 is a local-first LaTeX editor for macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel). It runs entirely on your Mac — no cloud compilation, no subscription required to start editing.

What caught my attention was the built-in Equation OCR. Not a separate tool — literally integrated into the editor itself.

Here's how it works in practice:

Take a screenshot of the equation you want (⌘+Shift+4 on Mac)
In TeX64, invoke the OCR feature and paste your screenshot
The LaTeX code is generated and inserted directly at your cursor position

That's it. No alt-tabbing, no copy-paste from a separate window, no context switch. The result lands in your .tex file ready to edit.

What It Handles

I've thrown a lot at this:

Printed textbook equations — Clean PDF or scanned book pages work very well. Standard calculus, linear algebra, PDE systems, probability density functions, matrix expressions.

Handwritten notes — This surprised me the most. I took photos of my own lecture notes (not the cleanest handwriting) and the OCR handled integral signs, Greek letters, and vector notation with reasonable accuracy.

Whiteboard/blackboard photos — Works for reasonably clear blackboard shots. I started photographing the board at the end of lectures.

PDF equation screenshots — Screenshot a region of a PDF, paste it in, done.

When OCR Makes Mistakes (and What Saves You)

Let me be honest: OCR output isn't always perfect. Typical issues:

Subscripts and superscripts getting flipped on complex expressions
Bold notation inconsistency (\mathbf vs \boldsymbol)
Missing closing braces in long expressions

This is where TeX64's AI assistant, Axiom, comes in. Axiom reads your compile log and proposes fixes with diffs. It'll say something like: "line 34: missing \end{align}, suggested insertion:" and show you exactly what to add. One click to apply.

The combination of OCR + Axiom means the workflow becomes: capture → insert → compile → if error, ask Axiom → one-click fix.

My Current Workflow

When reading papers/textbooks:

Keep TeX64 open alongside my PDF viewer
When I hit an equation I want to reference, ⌘+Shift+4 to select it
Paste into TeX64, OCR converts it
I adjust notation to match my document's conventions

When working from handwritten notes:

At the end of a working session, photograph key pages
Run them through TeX64 to digitize the equations

When hitting errors:

Compile, check the log
If it's OCR-related, Axiom usually spots and fixes it in one interaction

The Honest Limitations

macOS only — There's no Windows or Linux version.

Requires MacTeX or TeX Live — TeX64 is the editor; you need a TeX distribution installed separately. TeX64 walks you through this setup on first launch.

Heavy OCR use needs a paid plan — There's a free tier, and for occasional use it's plenty. But if you're OCR-ing dozens of images per day, you'll likely need to upgrade.