A guide for installing LaTeX on Windows and using Visual Studio Code with the LaTeX Workshop extension as a TeX editor.
Strawberry PerlMikTeX(orTeX Live)- Visual Studio Code
- Sumatra PDF (or any external PDF viewer that handles live updating)
2. Add the binaries of Strawberry Perl, MikTeX, and VS Code to Path in your System Environment Variables.
Press Win+S and type "Edit the system environment variables", click open or press enter, then go to Environment Variables -> Path -> New to add the directories of the binaries where the default should be similar to something as follows:
C:\Strawberry\c\bin
C:\Strawberry\perl\site\bin
C:\Strawberry\perl\bin
C:\Program Files\MiKTeX\miktex\bin\x64
C:\Users\<USERPROFILE>\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\bin
If you've installed TeX Live as your TeX distribution, you can skip this step as the installer takes care of this on Windows.
3. Open MikTeX (or TeX Live), check for updates, update the packages, and install the latexmk package using the package manager.
4. Open VS Code, click on Extensions or press Ctrl+Shift+X, search and install the following extensions:
// in file "C:\Users\<USERPROFILE>\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\settings.json"
"latex-workshop.view.pdf.viewer": "external", // open PDF with an external viewer (e.g., SumatraPDF)
"latex-workshop.view.pdf.external.synctex.command": "C:/Users/<USERPROFILE>/AppData/Local/SumatraPDF/SumatraPDF.exe", // or change this directory to your preferred external PDF viewer
"latex-workshop.view.pdf.external.synctex.args": [
"-forward-search",
"%TEX%",
"%LINE%",
"-reuse-instance",
"-inverse-search",
"\"C:\\Users\\<USERPROFILE>\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\Code.exe\" \"C:\\Users\\<USERPROFILE>\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\resources\\app\\out\\cli.js\" --ms-enable-electron-run-as-node -r -g \"%f:%l\"",
"%PDF%"
],
"latex-workshop.synctex.synctexjs.enabled": true, // enable using a built-in synctex function (Ctrl+Alt+J and Ctrl+LeftClick)
"latex-workshop.synctex.afterBuild.enabled": true, // execute forward synctex at cursor position after compiling LaTeX project
"latex-workshop.latex.autoBuild.run": "never",
"latex-workshop.latex.recipe.default": "<FOO>LaTeX Recipe", // replace the placeholder <FOO> with either "pdf", "Xe", or "Lua" to respectively use pdfTeX, XeTeX, or LuaTeX as the TeX engine
"latex-workshop.latex.recipes": [
{
"name": "pdfLaTeX Recipe",
"tools": [
"pdflatex",
"clean-temporary-files" // optional
]
},
{
"name": "XeLaTeX Recipe",
"tools": [
"xelatex",
"clean-temporary-files" // optional
]
},
{
"name": "LuaLaTeX Recipe",
"tools": [
"lualatex",
"clean-temporary-files" // optional
]
}
],
"latex-workshop.latex.tools": [
{
"name": "pdflatex",
"command": "latexmk",
"args": [
"-synctex=1",
"-interaction=nonstopmode",
"-file-line-error",
"-pdflatex",
"-outdir=%DIR%",
"%DOC_EXT%"
]
},
{
"name": "xelatex",
"command": "latexmk",
"args": [
"-synctex=1",
"-interaction=nonstopmode",
"-file-line-error",
"-xelatex",
"-outdir=%DIR%",
"%DOC_EXT%"
]
},
{
"name": "lualatex",
"command": "latexmk",
"args": [
"-synctex=1",
"-interaction=nonstopmode",
"-file-line-error",
"-lualatex",
"-outdir=%DIR%",
"%DOC_EXT%"
]
},
{
"name": "clean-temporary-files",
"command": "latexmk",
"args": ["-c"]
}
],
Make sure to replace every instance of <USERPROFILE> to your user profile and replace <FOO> with either pdf, Xe, or Lua depending on your choice of TeX engine and the document being compiled. You can also change the value of "latex-workshop.view.pdf.external.synctex.command" to be the directory of your preferred external PDF viewer if you're not using Sumatra PDF.
Open File Explorer and create a folder for your LaTeX documents, e.g., D:\<LaTeX-folder> and create a new text document with the .tex filename extension, e.g., D:\<LaTeX-folder>\<document-name>.tex (make sure to toggle "File name extensions" in the View section at the top of File Explorer). Right click on the <document-name>.tex and click Open with -> Choose another app -> Visual Studio Code and toggle the "Always use this app to open .tex files" then click "OK" to set VS Code as your default TeX editor.
% in file "D:\<LaTeX-folder>\<document-name>.tex"
\documentclass[12pt, a4paper]{article}
\title{Title}
\author{Author}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
Hello, World!
\end{document}
If you've succesfully compiled the LaTeX document, congratulations! You've installed LaTeX using MikTeX (or TeX Live) as the TeX distribution on Windows and you should be able to use VS Code as a TeX editor with the help of Strawberry Perl + latexmk + Code Runner + LaTeX Workshop.
*The only thing left I would recommend is to install themes (e.g., Material Darker), useful keybindings (e.g., Emacs Friendly Keymap), and colored indentation extensions (e.g., indent-rainbow).
*To italicize and bold your markup code, you can also add the following to your VS Code's settings.json file:
// in file "C:\Users\<USERPROFILE>\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\settings.json"
"editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
"[<VS-CODE-THEME]": {// replace <VS-CODE-THEME> with your preferred VS Code theme
"textMateRules": [
{
"name": "Markup - Italic",
"scope": [
"markup.italic"
],
"settings": {
"fontStyle": "italic",
}
},
{
"name": "Markup - Bold-Italic",
"scope": [
"markup.bold markup.italic",
"markup.italic markup.bold",
"markup.quote markup.bold",
"markup.bold markup.italic string",
"markup.italic markup.bold string",
"markup.quote markup.bold string"
],
"settings": {
"fontStyle": "bold italic",
}
},
{
"name": "Markup - Quote",
"scope": [
"markup.quote"
],
"settings": {
"fontStyle": "italic",
}
},
]
}
}