MacTeX

Distribution of TeX typesetting software for Mac computers

MacTeX Distribution
Developer(s)	MacTeX TeXnical working group

Stable release	MacTeX 2024 / March 13, 2024; 2 months ago (2024-03-13)

Operating system	macOS 10.14, 10.15, 11, 12, 13, or 14
Platform	Arm and Intel
Size	5.7 GB
Available in	English
Type	TeX Live redistribution
License	Mixed free licenses
Website	www.tug.org/mactex/
As of	March 2024

MacTeX is a free redistribution of TeX Live, a typesetting environment based on TeX. While TeX Live is designed to be cross-platform (running on Unix, macOS, and Windows), MacTeX includes Mac-specific utilities and front-ends (such as TeXShop and BibDesk).^[1] It is also pre-configured to work out-of-the-box with macOS, as it provides sensible defaults for configuration options that, in TeX Live, are left up to the user to allow for its cross-platform compatibility.

Details

MacTeX is packaged and distributed by the MacTeX TeXnical working group, a subgroup of TeX Users Group (TUG). TeX Live is distributed by the TUG, making MacTeX less a fork of TeX Live than a customised repackaging.

The full MacTeX install package contains three subpackages:^[1]

TeX Live
GUI applications
- BibDesk
- LaTeXiT (a LaTeX equation editor)
- TeX Live Utility (a utility to update, install or remove parts of TeX Live)
- TeXShop (a Mac-based TeX editor)
Ghostscript (an open source version of PostScript)

A substantially smaller version of MacTeX, BasicTeX, which does not contain Ghostscript or the aforementioned GUI programs, can be used instead along with a TeX editor as well.^[2]

For "Full TeX Live distribution without GUI applications" ^[3] use Homebrew

brew install mactex-no-gui

References

^ ^a ^b "MacTeX - TeX Users Group". tug.org. Retrieved 2019-07-22.
^ "More Packages - MacTeX - TeX Users Group". www.tug.org. Retrieved 2019-07-22.
^ "MacTex no GUI". brew.sh. Retrieved 2024-04-29.