Live preview runs a LaTeX engine compiled to WebAssembly inside your browser. Your document recompiles shortly after you stop typing. Nothing is uploaded and there is no server queue. This mode is labelled experimental in the app.
Turning it on
Open the preview pane and click the three-dot More options button in its toolbar. The menu has three groups:
- Compile: choose In-browser (fast) for live preview, or Server for the full server-side TeX Live. Server is the default.
- Update: choose Automatic to recompile as you type, or Manual to compile with the Compile button.
- Quality: choose Complete (exact) or Draft (fast, approximate).
You can also set the default for a project in Project Settings under Build, with the Build renderer option: Automatic, Browser / WASM when compatible, or Server / full TeX Live.
The engine and packages download on first use and are cached by the browser. Expect the first compile to be slow. Later ones start quickly.
Draft and Complete
Complete is the default and renders the real document. The last finished render stays on screen while the next one builds, so the pane never goes blank.
Draft renders the body against a simplified article preamble. It is faster but approximate, so fonts and layout can differ on heavy document classes. Use it while you work on structure and prose.
Live preview versus the server compile
The in-browser engine ships a subset of TeX Live, always uses pdfLaTeX, and fetches packages as needed. Some things behave differently from the server:
- Citations are not resolved in the browser preview. Compile on the server once to build the bibliography.
- A document that needs XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX falls back to the server compiler, and TeXposit tells you when it does.
- Unusual packages or fonts may render incompletely.
If the two disagree, the server result is authoritative. Use Server with a manual Compile to produce the PDF you download and submit.
When a compile fails
Open View log from the More options menu for the full compilation log. See Debugging errors.
Click to source
Clicking in the preview jumps to the matching line in the source, as with server-compiled output.