The best Latex Editor for MAC

Best is a matter of opinion. While I Googled this for you, I found TeXShop.

andy8,

there are quite a few “integrated” solutions, combining editor and pdf preview (the very fine TeXShop being one of them) -- some of them are quite new (even beta); TeXShop, on the other hand, is very mature:

TeXPad:

http://vallettaventures.com/texpad

Latexian:

http://tacosw.com/latexian/

TeXnicle:

http://www.bobsoft-mac.de/texnicle/texnicle.html

Scribo:

http://www.scriboapp.com/

Texmaker (cross-platform, qt-based; all the others are OS X native):

http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/index.html

You can also check the entries, and the comments, on Macupdate:

http://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/latex

That said, I use none of them, although I have TeXShop around. (This doesn’t mean the new integrated solutions aren’t any good; I haven’t tried them yet.)

That’s because what’s most important, imho, in a good LaTeX environment is the editor, i.e., how much help is there to get the source written. Accordingly, many people would agree that the best editor available plus a fine synchronised, but stand-alone pdf viewer is superior than a (compromising, or so the musing goes) all-in-one tool.

The, hands-down, best pdf viewer, supporting PDFSync (syncing source and pdf), is Skim; it’s free:

http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/

As regards the best editor, there is constant disagreement among OS X users, some would even say “war” -- but that just shows how vivid the Mac ecosphere is when it comes to such tools.

Leaving the “classics” aside, Emacs (Aquamacs, http://aquamacs.org/) and Vim (Macvim, http://code.google.com/p/macvim/), dreaded for their learning curve, worshipped for their power, two of the best, modern, clean, yet powerful editors are TextMate and Sublime Text 2:

http://macromates.com/

helpful: http://www.astrobetter.com/how-and-why-to-use-textmate-for-latex/

http://www.sublimetext.com/2

helpful: http://tekonomist.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/the-in-progress-latex-plugin-for-subl ime-text-2-4/

Many would hold that the combination of either TextMate (2) or Sublime Text 2 together with Skim provides the best LaTeX environment ever.

Take care.

I was looking at this thread and it's been a while since it started, but I hope the answer can still be useful:

If you want to be able to have a good visual interface while creating your content, LyX is a very good option. It is a word processor that uses LaTex as its engine. It's the one I like to use the most because it can be very effective even if the user is not really familiar with LaTex code.

http://www.lyx.org

TeXShop and LyX are both very nice on Mac. I write a lot of code so like using TeXShop, but LyX I think is much nicer to work with when you have lots of detailed equations and tables. Better to learn with TeXShop though since if you just strated with LyX you wouldn't learn the LaTeX.

I started using Texpad, which is available from the Apple Store and does quite a good job. It is commercial, but the result is the most convincing that I have seen for quite some time. The way how the result/errors are presented is what I am looking for. And it shows the complete input tree.

I wish it would show the different LaTeX commands too. But it comes with autocomplete. So, if you know what you are doing it is supporting you.

This is an older response, but it remains as helpful as ever!

For lighter-weight mathematical writing, check out Archimedes: http://www.mattrajca.com/archimedes/

Archimedes combines LaTeX and Markdown in a native OS X app and doesn't require external TeX packages to be installed. It features Xcode-style command completion, live previews, a math library, integration with OS X's share sheets, and more! You can even insert mathematical symbols by drawing them on your MacBook's trackpad or Magic Trackpad.

Disclaimer: I am the developer of Archimedes.

And if you struggle to remember those LaTeX commands: Detexify has now a Mac app. Find commands for symbols by drawing on your trackpad. See https://vimeo.com/160408368 for a demo. You find a download link at http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html.

Disclaimer: I am the developer of Detexify