I Was Told to Write My Thesis in LaTeX. Here's How I Actually Got Started.

My advisor’s email said: “Please submit your thesis in LaTeX format.”

I had two reactions: first, mild panic — I’d never written anything in LaTeX. Second, the overconfident thought that I could figure it out over a long weekend.

Spoiler: the weekend came and went. I was still staring at a wall of compile errors I couldn’t parse.

Three Attempts, Three Failures

Attempt 1: MacTeX + TeXShop

I downloaded MacTeX (the full 5GB installation — took forever), opened the bundled TeXShop editor, pasted in a sample document, hit compile, and got this:

! LaTeX Error: File amsmath.sty' not found.`

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Spent an hour searching Stack Overflow. The suggested fix was to run tlmgr install amsmath in the terminal. Ran it. Got a different error. Gave up.

Attempt 2: VSCode + LaTeX Workshop

People on Reddit swore by this setup. So I installed VSCode, installed the LaTeX Workshop extension, copied a settings.json snippet from a blog post, and managed to compile a basic document. Then I tried to write Japanese text in it. Characters came out garbled. I spent ninety minutes debugging the encoding issue before abandoning this path too.

Attempt 3: Overleaf

Fine. I’ll use the browser-based one. No installation required, real-time preview, beautiful. Worked great right up until my thesis hit 80 pages and the free tier started timing out on compiles. The paid plan was $19/month. I wasn’t ready to commit.

What Finally Worked: TeX64

A classmate mentioned TeX64, a macOS-native LaTeX editor. I was skeptical — I’d already wasted hours on three other tools. But I tried it, and something clicked.

The First Thing I Noticed: It Tells You What’s Wrong

When I opened TeX64 for the first time, the app ran a quick diagnostic of my environment. Instead of a cryptic error, I saw something like:

⚠ latexmk not found. It looks like MacTeX isn’t installed. You can download it here: [link]

This might sound like a small thing. But after hours of Googling vague error messages, having software just tell me what the problem is felt almost revolutionary. I installed MacTeX by following the link, restarted TeX64, and it worked.

TeX64 runs entirely on your Mac — Apple Silicon and Intel both — with all compilation happening locally. Once MacTeX is installed, you don’t need an internet connection to write or compile.

Axiom: An AI That Actually Understands LaTeX Errors

Every LaTeX beginner eventually hits this wall: the compile fails with an error message that makes no sense to a human.

! Misplaced alignment tab character &. l.34 & 2x + 3y

! Misplaced alignment tab character &. l.34 & 2x + 3y

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I’d stare at this for ten minutes, cross-reference it with a LaTeX cheat sheet, wonder if I was missing a package, and eventually just delete whatever I’d written and start over.

TeX64 has a built-in AI assistant called Axiom. When a compile fails, Axiom reads the error log alongside your .tex files and gives you a plain-English explanation:

"The & character on line 34 is being used outside an alignment environment like align or tabular. Try wrapping your equations in \begin{align} ... \end{align}."

And then Axiom proposes a fix as a diff. You can review exactly what would change before applying it. It never silently modifies your files.

I went from "I’ll just delete this and rewrite it" to "okay, I understand what went wrong and I know how to fix it." That mindset shift mattered a lot in the early weeks.

Building Equations Without Memorizing Commands

One of the things that makes LaTeX intimidating for beginners is that math requires learning a whole new vocabulary of commands.

\int_{0}^{\infty} e^{-x^2} \, dx = \frac{\sqrt{\pi}}{2}_

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TeX64 has a visual math palette: a panel where you click symbols and see the equation rendered in real time. Click the integral sign, set the bounds, and TeX64 writes the LaTeX for you. The generated code is clean and editable. You can see what \int_{0}^{\infty} looks like as you build it, and gradually the syntax starts to make sense._

After two weeks of building equations with the palette and seeing the corresponding code, I found I could write many of them from memory without thinking.

SyncTeX: Click PDF, Jump to Source

SyncTeX syncs your PDF preview and source file bidirectionally. Click anywhere in the PDF, and your editor jumps to the corresponding line in the .tex file.

When your thesis is 100+ pages across multiple files, finding the source of any given paragraph becomes a real chore. With SyncTeX, I just click in the PDF wherever I want to edit, and I’m there instantly.

Honest Limitations

macOS only. TeX64 won’t run on Windows or Linux.

You still need MacTeX. TeX64 is an editor, not a LaTeX compiler. You’ll need MacTeX or TeX Live installed separately. TeX64 walks you through this if it’s missing.

No real-time collaboration. Overleaf is still the better choice for simultaneous co-authoring.

AI features have usage limits on the free tier. Basic editing, compilation, and SyncTeX are free with no account required. Heavy use of Axiom or OCR requires a paid plan.

How to Get Started

• Go to tex64.com and download the app.

• Open TeX64 — it will detect if MacTeX is missing and guide you through installing it.

• Create a new document and try compiling the template.

• If anything goes wrong, ask Axiom.

TeX64 shortens the path from "I don’t know where to start" to "I’m actually writing LaTeX." For Mac users, that’s worth a lot.

Check it out at tex64.com.