Page for Beginners: If you are curious about TeX and LaTeX and would like to try it out without a massive installation, click Easy Setup. This page explains how to install and try TeX and LaTeX, and how to easily remove the installation if you decide not to use it.

GUI-Applications: The full MacTeX install package contains a subpackage called GUI-Applications, which installs several programs in /Applications/TeX. The GUI-Applications subpackage is also available as a separate download; see the Page for Beginners above. The page GUI-Link has a description of the contents of the package, including a link to a special version of TeXShop to be used on macOS 26, Tahoe.

Four Ways to Install TeX Live on a Macintosh:

MacTeX-2026 requires macOS 11, Big Sur, or higher and runs natively on Intel and Arm processors. To download, click MacTeX Download.

The smaller BasicTeX-2026 also requires macOS 11, Big Sur, or higher and runs natively on Intel and Arm processors. To download, click BasicTeX Download.

You can also install TeX Live 2026 using the TeX Live Unix Install Script. This method supports macOS 10.6, Snow Leopard, and higher and runs on Intel and Arm processors. To download, click Unix Download.

To obtain older versions of MacTeX if you are running macOS 10.3 through 10.15, click Older Versions.

About TeX Live, MacTeX, and BasicTeX: TeX Live is the standard distribution of TeX, LaTeX, and related programs produced by TeX Users Groups across the world. The distribution runs on the Macintosh, Windows, Linux, and Unix machines, using the same packages and fonts on all of these platforms. The binary programs are compiled separately for each platform, but from the same source code. The icon at the top right of our web pages is a link which takes you to the home page of TUG, the English language TeX Users Group.

MacTeX is a package which installs TeX Live on the Macintosh. The package is notarized by Apple and uses Apple's standard install technology. It contains native code for both Intel and Arm processors. When installation is complete, the software is fully configured and ready to use. The icon at the top left of our web pages is a link which takes you to this MacTeX home page.

The MacTeX working group inside TUG provides two install packages. One, BasicTeX, is relatively small, about 140 MB, but fully capable of typesetting standard TeX and LaTeX documents. The other, MacTeX, is much larger and includes essentially all software available for typesetting with TeX-like systems, including TeX, LaTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX, ConTeXt, etc. This complete system supports almost every written language in use today, including languages of Western Europe, Russian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and a multitude of more obscure scripts.

BasicTeX and MacTeX can coexist on the same machine, so users experimenting with TeX may reasonably install BasicTeX to try it out. The full MacTeX is recommended if you are certain that you will use TeX, even if you are a beginner, because any example in a book will automatically work and no time will be wasted adding extra missing components to the distribution.

TeX Live Utility and Keeping TeX Live Up To Date

Both the full MacTeX and the GUI-Applications package provided for BasicTeX install several programs in /Applications/TeX: TeXShop, TeX Live Utility, LaTeXiT, BibDesk, and hintView. One of these, TeX Live Utility, is crucial for keeping your TeX distribution up to date. When TeX Live Utility is first opened, it lists all packages that have been updated overnight and offers to install these updates in the distribution. But if you only open TeX Live Utility on rare occasions, it will provide all updates since it was last used.

Some users never update because they are in the middle of a project and need a completely stable platform. Others, like me, start each day with a cup of coffee, a TeX update, and a newspaper. Recently there have been rapid tagging changes in LaTeX (see below) and users who did not update completely missed these changes.

MacTeX users may have several TeX distributions installed. For example, the directory /usr/local/texlive might contain folders named 2025, 2026, 2026basic. Each is a full TeX distribution, When a new distribution is installed, it becomes the "active" distribution; it is used for typesetting and it is updated by TeX Live Utility. But TeX Live Utility also plays a crucial role when switching distributions. In the program's "Configure" menu, select "Change Default TeX Live Version". A list of available distributions will be presented, and a new active distribution can be selected.

Features of MacTeX:

• See The LaTeX Tagging Project for details on tagging LaTeX documents.

• See MacTeX and MacTeXtras for a brief description of MacTeX and MacTeXtras. Our policy on which versions of macOS to support is described in Policy on Supported Systems. See What's in the MacTeX package for a complete description of what is installed, and read Uninstalling to uninstall MacTeX.

• Changes in the 2026 version of the software are listed in New Features in MacTeX-2026 and TeX Live 2026. The MacTeXtras curated list of documentation and links to additional TeX and LaTeX software is available at MacTeXtras.

• We are often asked about installing additional fonts in TeX Live. Important changes introduced in 2012 and modified in more recent years affect configuring TeX for these new fonts. These changes are described in Adding-Fonts-and-Restricted-Shell-Escape by Herbert Schulz, which also includes information on Restricted Shell Escape. TeX Live automatically converts eps illustrations to pdf illustrations for appropriate typesetting engines. See Eps-Tiff-Conversion.pdf for details.

• Suggestions on keeping TeX up to date are given in Update Schedule. In particular, daily updates of programs in TeX Live can be obtained using TeX Live Utility. Installation of MacTeX-2026 does not overwrite older versions of TeX Live, and switching between these versions is described in Multiple TeX Distributions.

• The spell checker cocoAspell does not mark TeX commands as misspelled. It is not installed by MacTeX. To get it, see: cocoAspell project.

Solving Problems

• For problems downloading the software, see Downloading Issues. Other common problems specific to the Macintosh are described at Mac-specific Complications. For help with fonts, see Adding-Fonts-and -Restricted-ShellEscape. See Getting Help for more general help. Answers to frequently asked questions are given in Frequently Asked Questions.

• For problems with dvisvgm: About dvisvgm.

• For problems running ConTeXt: ConTeXt Initialization.

Learning about TeX and LaTeX

• To start learning LaTeX or plain TeX: (La)TeX help resources

• For the history of TeX: Just what is TeX?

• TeX can produce documents of great beauty and complexity. Many examples are provided in the TeX Live web pages, accessed by clicking the icon at the top right of each of our pages. Early in the development of MacTeX, samples were produced specifically for our site, and while these samples are now quite old, it is fun to glance at them: Trying Out TeX.

MacTeX for Developers

• Notarization and Associated Issues: Notarization-for-Developers.

• MacTeX was originally conceived in 2005 by Wendy McKay and coded by Jonathan Kew. The current system is created and maintained by Richard Koch, Herbert Schulz, and Bruno Voisin.