For two years I paid Mathpix $10 a month to convert math equations from images into LaTeX. It was worth it at first. Snap a photo of a textbook page, get clean LaTeX in seconds — genuinely magic.
But then I started doing the mental math. How often was I actually using it? Some months, every day. Some months, maybe a dozen times. And every month, without fail, $10 charged to the card.
The real problem wasn't the price. It was the workflow.
The Actual Problem With "Tool Per Task" Setups
My routine looked like this: I'm in my LaTeX editor, I need a formula from a lecture slide PDF. So I minimize the editor, open Mathpix, snip the equation, copy the LaTeX, switch back to the editor, paste it, resume writing.
Six steps. Every time. For what should be a two-second operation.
I'm not saying it was unbearable. It wasn't. But multiply that by 20 equations in a paper and you've added a non-trivial amount of context-switching friction to your day. I kept wondering: why is OCR a separate app at all?
What I Looked At First
Before I found what I ended up using, I tried a few things:
Pix2Text — An open-source Python library with surprisingly good accuracy. It does what Mathpix does, for free. But it lives in the terminal. There's no integration with any editor, so the copy-paste ceremony doesn't go away. I'm not going to write a VS Code plugin for myself every time I want to avoid a SaaS subscription.
SmartSnip — A macOS snipping tool that outputs LaTeX. Clean UI, good accuracy, even has a local model option. I actually used this for a month. But again: it's a standalone tool. Same switching problem as Mathpix.
Browser-based options — DeepSeek's formula OCR is shockingly good and free. But "open browser, upload image, copy result" isn't exactly seamless when you're deep in a 60-page document.
Then I Found TeX64
A comment on a Japanese tech blog mentioned that TeX64, a macOS LaTeX editor, had OCR built into the editor itself. I'd never heard of it.
I downloaded it that evening.
The editor is solid. It detected my existing MacTeX installation without any configuration, opened my thesis project, and rendered the PDF in a split view. SyncTeX worked out of the box — click a paragraph in the PDF, jump to the source line. That alone was a quality-of-life improvement over my previous setup.
But the OCR: I took a screenshot of an equation from a lecture slide — a moderately complex one with summations and subscripts — and pasted it into TeX64. Three seconds later, the cursor was sitting right after:
\sum_{k=0}^{n} \binom{n}{k} x^k y^{n-k} = (x + y)^n
I didn't touch another application. I didn't open a browser. I didn't leave my editor.
That's the thing. OCR in TeX64 isn't a feature bolted on the side — it's integrated into the editing flow. You stay in the editor.
What Else TeX64 Does That I Didn't Expect to Care About
Axiom, the AI assistant: When I get a compile error, I used to copy the log, paste it into ChatGPT, and wait for a response. Axiom reads the actual compile log, figures out the problem, and shows me a diff with the fix. One click to apply. It reads all my .tex files and my BibTeX, so it understands the full project context. It also searches arXiv and can insert BibTeX entries directly.
Visual equation palette: Click symbols to build equations, see the rendered output in real time. I know LaTeX well enough that I don't need this constantly, but for complex matrix notation or obscure symbols, it beats hunting through documentation.
Local-first: Everything compiles on my Mac. No cloud, no internet required for compiling. My thesis drafts don't touch anyone's servers. This matters more to me than I expected.
What You Should Know Before Trying It
TeX64 is macOS only. If you're on Windows or Linux, stop reading here — it's not for you.
You still need MacTeX (or TeX Live) installed separately. TeX64 doesn't bundle a TeX distribution. First-time setup takes a bit, but TeX64's environment diagnostics walk you through it and detect what's missing.
The OCR has a free tier. If you're doing heavy OCR work daily, you'll hit limits and need a paid plan. For most users — occasional to moderate equation conversion — the free tier is fine or the paid plan is cheaper than Mathpix anyway.
Real-time collaborative editing isn't a thing here. If you and your advisor are both editing a document simultaneously in Overleaf, TeX64 doesn't replace that. It's for solo work.
Should You Try It?
If you're a macOS user who writes LaTeX regularly — for a thesis, for research papers, for anything that involves equations — and you're currently paying for a separate OCR tool, the answer is probably yes.
The free tier doesn't even require an account to start. Download, open your project, try the OCR once. If it clicks, it clicks.
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