Eklavya's Blog ≡

Vim vs Overleaf

In this article, I compare these two approaches to editing LaTeX documents on Overleaf:

  1. Edit directly using Overleaf's editor.
  2. My setup: fetch from Overleaf using git, edit locally (using vim, pdflatex, and macOS Preview), and push to Overleaf using git.
Table of Contents

Details of My Setup

I edit latex code in vim and sync it to Overleaf using Git.

Advantages of Local Editing over Overleaf

  1. Offline use: Very useful in flights or areas with spotty connectivity. Danger of losing changes with Overleaf?
  2. Git: For checking diffs, branching, selectively committing/discarding changes.
  3. Fully customizable editor.
  4. With local PDF viewer, I can go back after clicking a hyperref.
  5. Overleaf's custom PDF viewer doesn't have bookmarks sidebar. I can use browser's PDF viewer instead of Overleaf's custom viewer to get back bookmarks, but then I lose dark mode and synctex.
  6. Spellcheck: Vim can iterate over typos. Vim can have per-project spellfile. Overleaf can't do these.

Advantages of Overleaf over Local Editing

  1. Simultaneous editing
  2. SyncTex: can jump from position in PDF to position in code and vice versa.

Features available in Both Setups

  1. Smart Autocomplete: Using the TexLab plugin in Vim.
  2. Dark mode PDFs: As of Feb 2026, Overleaf does this using the CSS filter invert(95%) hue-rotate(180deg) brightness(90%) contrast(90%);. When building PDFs locally, I use github:sharmaeklavya2/tex-colorscheme. Overleaf's solution is much cleaner here.