Git – being able to have precise version control over my writing is great, especially being able to branch.

For those with premium Overleaf accounts, there's a direct integration too, but I'm not ready to pay for it (especially next to all my other reasons of why to not use it).

Working locally makes referencing an absolute breeze – I can easy integrate my reference management workflow so papers are available to cite almost as soon as I find them.

This Smashing Magazine article might be a nice overview of some ncie features, though it's two years old now. There are too many useful features to give justice to here, but an abridged list might be: moving text up and down rows, integrated git (including showing diffs and managing conflicts), its universal find and replace, and its keyboard–based superpowers.

VS Code's text and code editing tools are almost unmatched (for the record, I haven't used Atom or Sublime Text) – It's also lightweight, open source, and the most popular editor for coders in industry.

My working directory syncs with iCloud Drive, I run Time Machine on an external hard drive, and since I run git (see below), I can also push changes to another online repository.

Double backups – writing offline makes backing up my responsibility, but I already have a robust system in place.

Or even changing how my editor, PDF viewer, and others are laid out.

Customizability – my Android friends might make fun of me for this, but being able to define keyboard shortcuts, change themes and fonts, and the editing layout are big plusses, especially if I am going to be spending many hours writing.

Also, I often work in places without internet (trains, busses, etc.), and I use VPNs, which sometimes have networking glitches too.

I want an offline editor – any online service suffers from interruptions and I become frustrated when Overleaf prevents me from writing at all during one.

Why am I doing this? I don't want to rely on Overleaf: Unfortunately, I still much prefer to write and compile LaTeX files on my own computer. It's also quite popular here at TU Delft one student council organization wants to get us institutional licenses because of how widely we use it. Overleaf became my tool of choice because of its powerful collaborative, text editing, and LaTeX compiling features. OneDrive for Business/Office 365 used to be my go-to, but it was hard to get accounts working together.

Additionally, it seemed difficult to help all my group members get some collaborative writing platform working together (and we all avoid Google Docs because of how limited its capabilities are).

In the past few months, I've finally learned to use LaTeX properly in an attempt to make my eventual thesis-writing life easier.

Latex text editor for mac