Installation

Two installs, in this order: Texpile itself, then a TeX distribution for it to compile with. Editing works as soon as Texpile opens; producing a PDF needs the second one.

Windows The installer, then TeX Live or MiKTeX. macOS The .dmg, then MacTeX or BasicTeX. Linux The .deb or AppImage, then TeX Live.

Do I need LaTeX installed?

For editing, no. The visual editor, source editor, spell check, intellisense, and version control all work on their own. For compiling a PDF and for live preview, yes: Texpile does not bundle a TeX distribution and does not compile in the cloud. It runs the one on your machine, which is what keeps your documents local and lets you use the exact packages and versions your paper depends on.

Check it worked

Whichever platform you are on, this is the test. In a terminal, ask latexmk for its version. If that prints a version, Texpile will find it too:

latexmk --version

Then open a folder in Texpile and press Compile. The default command is latexmk with lualatex, and anything that goes wrong is parsed out of the log into the Problems panel rather than left in the terminal.

Getting started Compiling, in full