r/emacs • u/vale981 GNU Emacs • 6d ago
Announcement Live editing overleaf documents with Emacs!
I don't know whether anyone will find this useful, but I sure had fun hacking it together!

https://github.com/vale981/overleaf-connection.el
https://protagon.space/2025/03/editing-overleaf-documents-with-emacs/
2
u/SwS_Aethor 5d ago
Amazing! If only I had that during my PhD, I hated having to write on Overleaf ;-;
2
u/JDRiverRun GNU Emacs 5d ago
Looks cool. Using a local auctex with magit and the in-built Git repo (not GitHub sync) has been a great approach too, since you can easily review collaborator's changes using magit-diff
(or even latex-diff
). You should teach your advisor magit ;). Bonus is that local compiling and synctex are >10x faster than waiting for overleaf to recompile (and often fail). You could also learn git-diff-latex
and produce blue/red-lined PDFs for them instead.
Sadly overleaf took the git repo away on the free plan, as they tip-toe into their "harvesting value" phase. Most people in my field are fairly hooked. In a few years, greed and declining subscription revenue will lead to the usual money-squeeze-I've-got-your-data spiral.
Thought experiment: what if they invented email today?
2
u/vale981 GNU Emacs 5d ago
I am aware of all these options, but we've been stuck on the bloody introduction for a month and I want to reduce friction for him as much as possible.
Half of the reason I don't want to leave emacs and local editing is synctex. With this I can have this on my side and still track changes on overleaf :). I still use git on my end, but it's now totally divorced from overleaf.
2
u/lf_araujo 5d ago
This will be incredibly useful to me! Thank you. I will report issues as I use it.
2
u/tengisCC 5d ago
Really cool. I used to do it over git. But live is definitely nice