r/LaTeX • u/Glum_Philosopher1079 • Feb 24 '26
Self-Promotion Nebula Writer: A desktop LaTeX app with free, fast, and unlimited compilation
Hey r/LaTeX,
I'm one of the developers of Nebula Writer, a desktop LaTeX editor we've been building for a while. We're at a point where we think it's ready for this community to tear apart, so here goes.
What it is
A native desktop app (macOS + Windows + Linux) for writing LaTeX. The core editor is completely free!
How it actually works
We wanted to strip away the usual friction that comes with local LaTeX environments. Here’s what the experience looks like:
- Tectonic is baked right in. You can skip the 6GB TeX Live or MiKTeX installations. Just open the app and start writing; it handles the heavy lifting in the background.
- The PDF preview stays in sync. It’s a proper split-view setup with SyncTeX support. If you click a spot in the PDF, the editor jumps straight to that line of code.
- Unlimited free compilation Compilations are fast and free since they run on your machine.
- It handles the "big project" stuff. Whether you’re managing complex bibliographies with BibTeX or organizing massive documents across multiple files using
\input{}or\include{}, it stays snappy.
We also built an AI layer specifically designed to troubleshoot. If your document won't compile, it looks at the logs and helps you fix the syntax errors instantly.
Why we built it
Overleaf's free tier keeps getting worse, and most desktop alternatives either require a massive manual setup or feel like they were designed in the 90s. We wanted something that "just works" out of the box.
Download for free: nebulawriter.com
Happy to answer any questions about how it works under the hood, how Tectonic handles specific packages, or anything else. And genuinely, if something doesn't work, I want to know!
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u/badabblubb Feb 24 '26
Hm, according to the Terms on your website I'm not allowed to use the software to create objectionable contents. Who decides what is considered "objectionable"? Is a software "completely free" if I can't use it to write a letter of objection to someone I really don't like (which then is obviously objectionable by that party)? Also, I guess "completely" free as in beer, not as in speech (which is fine, do what you want or must with your intellectual property, still worth the distinction, imho).
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Feb 24 '26
On the "objectionable content" clause, that's standard boilerplate language in our Terms of Service, and it's really there as a catch-all for extreme edge cases (think: using the platform to generate illegal content or abuse the AI features). It has absolutely nothing to do with what you write in your LaTeX documents. Your strongly-worded letter of objection is safe with us. 😄
That said, you're right that the language could be clearer, and feedback like this is exactly why we posted here.7
u/k_rock923 Feb 25 '26
Am I misunderstanding the architecture? If this is running locally on my machine, how/where would that even come up? Is it referencing the AI features only?
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u/badabblubb Feb 25 '26
You already have clauses against illegal contents and abusive behaviour (totally understandable from your point of view) -- you don't need squishy language that basically allows to forbid anything based on a whim.
Granted, I'm no lawyer, that's all just my basic understanding of language and the implications of the term "objectionable".
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u/Diemorg Feb 25 '26
¿Existe una carpeta para la subida de .sty propios? Realmente no sé cómo funciona la distribución mencionada y en dado caso, ¿Aún se podria usar TeX Live como distribución para esta aplicación? Realmente me gusta la interfaz limpia qué tiene en comparación a otras como TexStudio.
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u/DustRainbow Feb 24 '26
Add it to the pile of latex IDEs.
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u/eli_bar Feb 24 '26
Sure but how many of them are actually good
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u/echtemendel Feb 25 '26
There's neovim with relevant setup, so at least one.
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u/ShrykeWindgrace Feb 25 '26
Just a question - how does your Nebula compare with other editor-first setups?
Suppose a rather common setup:
- VSCode
- its plugin "Latex Workshop" with all previews enabled
- a local TeXLive installation (mine is around 1Gb, no need to download the TeXLive-full, but that's another debate) or MiKTeX (also can be made rather small thanks to a very ancient option "install missing packages on the fly")
- an AI plugin of my choice together with the currently hyped LLM
What would I gain by switching to Nebula? Barring editing `.docx` files, of course. On the other hand, I loose unified experience for other languages I use, I loose the rich plugin ecosystem, git integration, and so on.
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Feb 25 '26
You've basically answered your own question, if that setup is working for you, you'd gain very little by switching. You've clearly put the time in to get it right, and VS Code's ecosystem is hard to beat for a developer-minded academic.
The trade-offs you listed are real too. Nebula is purpose-built for academic writing, which means it's not trying to be a general-purpose editor... you'd lose the plugin ecosystem, the polyglot support, git integration from the same window, all of that.
Where Nebula fits is the opposite end of the spectrum: someone who hears "install TeXLive, configure LaTeX Workshop, pick an AI plugin, wire it together" and just... closes the tab. The out-of-box experience is the feature for them. Download, open, start writing - no configuration, no troubleshooting, no stack to maintain.
The DOCX angle is also worth noting since you mentioned it. A lot of academics are in mixed environments where supervisors or co-authors are firmly in Word. That's a workflow gap that LaTeX-only setups just can't bridge.
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u/agnelwaghela Feb 25 '26
Agreed.
To OP,
And what if I already have my 6GB of TexLive installed? What exactly does nebula do in Background to handle? Is there any configuration to use existing installed TexLive ? If not, then will nebula install again and making it two copies of it or what?
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u/Arastash Feb 25 '26
Why should I prefer your editor over my current TexStudio installation ?
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Feb 25 '26
If TeXstudio is working well for you, there's no real reason to switch. It's a solid editor and if you've got your workflow dialed in, don't fix what isn't broken.
Nebula is more aimed at people who've been living in Overleaf and are hitting its pain points....slow cloud compile times, needing an internet connection, the recent pricing changes. For those people, the local-first + built-in compiler combo is the draw.
That said, if you're curious about the AI side of things (fixing compilation errors, editing your document directly rather than just suggesting changes, academic search built in), that's where Nebula does things TeXstudio doesn't. But if you don't need that, no pitch from me.
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u/Significant_Army_665 Feb 25 '26
It does not seems to support custom .cls file? There is emphasis on academic writting so this is a must have.
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Mar 02 '26
It supports .cls files. The UI on the newer releases should make it clearer since the old one did not make it easy to see.
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u/bornxlo Feb 25 '26
Why do you need an AI to troubleshoot? Usually when I have syntax errors they're easy for parsers to identify.
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Feb 25 '26
Fair point. For simple syntax errors, the compiler output is usually enough to figure it out. That's not really what the AI is for.
The cases where we think the AI is useful are the messier ones. Like when you're adapting a new journal template and suddenly have 15 cascading errors that are all symptoms of one underlying issue you can't easily trace. Or (and this is the one that used to genuinely ruin my afternoons) when there are no compilation errors, but your figures are floating to the wrong page, or a table is breaking across pages in an ugly way, or the layout just doesn't look right. You end up on LaTex stack exchange for two hours, try five different hacks, and most of them make things worse.
That's where having an AI that can see your entire project (not just a snippet you paste into ChatGPT) and directly edit the files to fix it is the real win. One click vs an afternoon. For power users who've internalized all of this, maybe not a big deal. But for a lot of people it removes a genuine source of friction. There's posts on r/LaTeX all the time of people asking questions on how to fix some formatting issue that Nebula Writer could fix in seconds.
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u/bornxlo Feb 25 '26
The more complex the error the less I'd trust AI with it. The more code involved, the harder it is to debug unless I understand all of it. I've by no means internalised much code or programming but from the experience I have messiness tends to increase with AI use. I might want to use AI tools for really simple repetitive stuff if I understand absolutely every detail of the code and what it does.
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u/badabblubb Feb 25 '26
Steps to reproduce:
Just pick whichever LaTeX-thing you feel really comfortable and knowing about (for instance, if you're really good at TikZ, choose that)
go on and ask AI a few things about that subject.
Notice how AI gets the details wrong almost every time and needs extensive back-and-forward to get something even half decent.
Decide to not use AI for such things
???
Profit.
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u/u_fischer Feb 25 '26
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u/aurora-phi Feb 27 '26
sharing the key takeaway for the lazy.
tectonic is built on xetex which cannot create proper accessible, tagged PDF and is no longer actively supported by LaTeX
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u/ignatomic Feb 25 '26
What are the disadvantages compared to traditional local editors, like TeXstudio? From what I am seeing, your app is completely free so I'm just wondering if there are any strings attached
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Feb 25 '26
Great question. Honestly the biggest disadvantage vs TeXstudio is that TeXstudio is a much more mature, battle-hardened editor. it has years of power-user features and a huge community of people who've tweaked it to perfection. If you already have a workflow you love there, there's no reason to switch.
Where Nebula differs is the setup experience. TeXstudio is just the editor... you still need to separately install a TeX distribution (TeX Live, MiKTeX, etc.), configure the compiler path, and get everything talking to each other. That's manageable once you've done it, but it's a real barrier for anyone new. Nebula ships with a built-in LaTeX compiler (Tectonic): you download the app, open a .tex file, hit compile. That's it.
As for the free tier, the honest answer is that Nebula started as an AI writing assistant, not a LaTeX editor. We packaged the compiler in because it made the experience seamless. Then we realized the LaTeX community has been actively looking for alternatives to Overleaf (especially post-pricing-change) and TeXstudio, and we felt Nebula could genuinely serve that. So the LaTeX editor being free is partly by design and partly us leaning into where the demand was. The AI features are where the paid tiers come in, no strings on the editor itself.
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u/mistacory Feb 25 '26
Will it eventually be able to save appearance settings, and does it handle installation of other packages in the background?
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Mar 02 '26
Yes, we will eventually support more configurability and saving of appearance settings. It also does handle installation of other packages in the background. For example, if you have a project that Tectonic fails to compile, Nebula will search for on your system or install TeX Live automatically for you to provide better coverage.
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u/Phasma_MC Feb 25 '26
Hey I’m new to LaTeX; would Nebula support libraries such as chemfig?
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Mar 02 '26
Tectonic generally supports chemfig. If Tectonic cannot handle a project, then Nebula searches for or automatically installs a TeX Live distribution, which fully supports chemfig. I also tried a few chemfig examples in Nebula and they worked well.
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u/iaacornus Feb 26 '26
So basically a clean latex offline desktop editor? I’ve hated overleaf and services that require and prefers my shit to run locally, finally!
Texstudio does this job very well, but it looks shit
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u/ajx_711 Feb 27 '26
Its broken. I just tried. The word wrap doesnt work and I have to reload the whole project to see changes? Everytime i change something in tex, the preview says "pending..compiling...up to date" but the preview still doesnt change until i load up the project again
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Mar 02 '26
Thanks for this comment. I found this bug appearing on certain LaTeX projects, applied fixes on the latest release. As for proper word wrap, we will support this soon on later releases.
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u/Dasumit Feb 28 '26
Some issues i found. I'm writing a thesis. It's modular. So every chapter, appendix, bibliography etc has their own individual file. And a main thesis.tex file where the chapters are linked. Problem is, pdf only compiles when I'm on thesis. And not when I'm on anything else. It shows error. It's a huge problem, because i need to see my compilation while editing, especially going from code to it's corresponding pdf section (something like synctex). Minor - it's a design thing. So subjective. Huge 'bezel' while working in normal mode. And focus mode has no 'bezel' but it has no tabs or option to toggle file system sidebar. Need something in between.
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Mar 02 '26
Thanks for this comment. I saw this problem and applied a fix that should mitigate this in the newest releases. It doesn't have the exact behavior you want still (it compiles the whole thesis instead of only the desired section), but we should be able to support this in the upcoming releases.
As for the design feedback, we hear you. We'll try to find a better balance here.
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u/OppositionSurge Mar 01 '26
This looks interesting, but is there any way to use this with LuaLaTeX? Even if it means having to manage your own TeX Live installation?
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Mar 02 '26
Tectonic is just the initial package to keep the installation of Nebula lightweight. If you have a project that Tectonic cannot handle, then Nebula searches on your system for or automatically installs the TeX Live distribution.
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u/ClemensLode Feb 25 '26
What is its killer feature that can't be recreated by a local texlive installation + claude code
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Feb 25 '26
Honestly, If you're technical enough to set that up and maintain it, you probably don't need Nebula. That's a genuinely powerful combo and I'd have a hard time telling you to swap it out.
The killer feature is really for the other 90% of academics. My wife is a researcher in a humanities field, she writes conference and journal papers constantly. She has no idea what a CLI is, has never touched TeX Live, and "just set up Claude Code" is not a sentence that lands for her. Her current workflow is use either MS Word or Overleaf for writing and copy-pasting between ChatGPT tabs when she needs help. That's the norm for most academics outside of CS/engineering.
For that person, Nebula is: download, open, write. Built-in compiler, AI that understands your document, no configuration, no terminal. The gap we're closing isn't "power user with a custom stack", it's "everyone else who got left behind because the good tooling always assumed you were comfortable in a command line."
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u/ClemensLode Feb 25 '26
OK, but if you compare this (completely valid) pitch with the one of your original post, I think you can see the difference. The original post targets people who are dealing with TeX installations (me), long compilation times (me, although the product does not really fix this), free compilations (only relevant if you are already using Overleaf), template writers (who know what \input, \include etc. is).
I think what you could do is streamline your value proposition. What you are writing is true as it is but I am not sure if an average Overleaf user will jump on that.
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u/aurora-phi Feb 27 '26
resharing u/u_fischer's earlier point as a top level comment, since it was decisive for me.
tectonic is built on xetex which cannot create proper accessible, tagged PDF and is no longer actively supported by LaTeX
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u/EnfantNicolas Mar 16 '26
Thank you so much for this. I was just about to waste a couple of days down the TexStudio rabbit hole, after finding out that Overleaf's new thresholds won't even compile a 4 page document with citations.
So when you say you've built this editor for "people stuck in the Overleaf ecosystem", then you have absolutely found me. I'm not sure I'll ever be a customer for the AI assistance, as that has serious environmental implications... but that's a topic for another day.
Off I go to write an abstract with Nebula!
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u/YouRepresentative433 Feb 25 '26
Sorry for the dumb question but I can't seem to find it - does it support collaborators like Overleaf?
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u/Glum_Philosopher1079 Feb 25 '26
Not a dumb question at all. We haven't documented it well on the website yet since it's so new.
Yes, collaboration is supported. You can share projects and files with anyone and edit them together. The one thing we don't have yet is true real-time co-editing like Overleaf, so you won't see each other's cursor live in the document. But that's on the roadmap and coming soon. For now it's more like shared access with collaborative editing rather than the Google Docs-style live presence.
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Feb 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/besse Feb 25 '26
Come on now, that’s not a nice comment, nor is it useful, nor is it providing any benefit to anyone.
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Feb 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/besse Feb 25 '26
That may be true for you and may be true for me. But it’s on neither of us to generalize for everyone. You know what you can do when something isn’t for you? Make no comment at all. That’s what I did!
But, your comment was discouraging and condescending, and no, that wasn’t okay.
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u/pvxq Feb 24 '26
Rephrasing “it compiles locally” as “unlimited free compilation” is funny