MacTeX
Distribution of TeX typesetting software for Mac computers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
- macOS 10.14, 10.15, 11, 12, 13, 14 or higher
| MacTeX Distribution | |
|---|---|
| Developer | MacTeX TeXnical working group |
| Stable release | MacTeX 2026
/ March 2, 2026 |
| Operating system |
|
| Platform | Arm and Intel |
| Size | 6.4 GB |
| Available in | English |
| Type | TeX Live redistribution |
| License | Mixed free licenses |
| Website | www |
| As of | March 2026 |
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
- 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] However, it still contains TeX, LaTeX, pdfTeX, MetaFont, dvips, MetaPost, and XeTeX.