Overleaf, a web-based LaTeX document editor

Overleaf is a web service that allows users to create complex and impressive LaTeX documents.

The Faculty of Computer Science, the Faculty of Arts, the Institutes of Physics and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the Faculty of Science have purchased a Pro license for their staff and students. The license allows an unlimited number of users to collaborate on a single document. Users can track changes to documents, revert to historical versions of a document, and use connections to Mendeley, GitHub, and Dropbox. The service is an alternative to a faculty installation of TeX.

If you are interested in making Overleaf available to your faculty, please contact your faculty IT staff.

Register at

To use the editor with a Professional, Pro license, register with your faculty email address (see the articles Sending and Reading Mail at FI and Email Accounts and Mail at FI). If you already have a personal account on Overleaf, add your faculty email address (from the domains fi.muni.cz, phil.muni.cz, sci.muni.cz, or math.muni.cz) to your email addresses in your account settings. If all else fails, register from učo@muni.cz.

Document preparation

In the university templates, choose one of the document templates offered. Currently, these are templates for preparing theses, letters and presentations. More templates can be found in the gallery. To start editing the selected template, click on the "Open as Template" button.

There are three panels in the editor. The left panel shows the directories and files that make up your LaTeX document and allows you to create, rename, move and delete files. The middle panel displays the source text of the document you are editing; the "Source - Rich Text" switch allows you to switch between raw source text and a mode where Overleaf replaces the standard LaTeX markup with a preview of the output formatting. The right panel then shows a preview of the translated LaTeX document.

The finished document can be downloaded as source code or as a PDF document via the "Download" section of the editor's main menu, which can be accessed via the "Menu" button in the upper left corner of the editor.

Further tutorials in English can be found on the Overleaf website; for example, Overleaf allows you to submit an article directly from the environment for publication in a journal.

Advanced Usage

To automate typesetting, Overleaf uses the latexmk. This program automatically runs commands to generate an index, bibliography, etc. The default behaviour of latexmk is suitable for the preparation of English documents. For example, when typesetting indexes with English alphabetical order, the commands run need to be changed, see the instructions.

In addition to working through the web editor, you can access your documents on Overleaf through Git. This allows you to work on your documents without an internet connection and to maintain current and historical versions of your documents locally on your computer. You can find the address of your document's Git repository via the "Git" button in the editor's main menu, which can be accessed via the "Menu" button in the top left corner of the editor.