MathLive

Write math in Obsidian visually, and turn screenshots of formulas into LaTeX.

Install in Obsidian · Website · Report a bug

MathLive replaces the LaTeX in your notes with a visual math editor. Click a formula to edit it like you would in a word processor, open a larger editor window with an on-screen math keyboard, or draw a box around a formula in a PDF or slide and scan it straight into your note.

Features

• Edit formulas where they are. Inline $...$ and block $$...$$ math turn into live editors in Live Preview. Inline formulas stay at text height, so your paragraphs don't jump around.
• Editor window. A focused editor for longer expressions, with Ctrl/Cmd + Enter to insert into the note.
• Math keyboard. An on-screen keyboard for fractions, roots, integrals, Greek letters and symbols.
• Scan formulas into LaTeX. Draw a box around a formula anywhere in Obsidian, such as a PDF you have open, or scan a screenshot from your clipboard. Uses the MathLive cloud scanner or your own self-hosted one.
• Find a formula. Search thousands of formulas from every science by name, by what they do, in your language, or by a bit of LaTeX, and insert one in a click. Free, no account needed. If the library doesn't have it, Write it with AI writes it for one scan.
• Draw a formula. Write it by hand on a drawing pad, or pair your phone or tablet once with a QR code and draw on it any time: what you draw goes into the formula you have open. You see the formula as you draw. Uses the MathLive cloud scanner.
• Turn PDFs into notes. Convert lecture slides, papers or scanned handwritten notes into a Markdown note, with every formula as editable LaTeX. Uses the MathLive cloud scanner.
• Magic edit. Pick Magic edit in ✨ AI fill, next to a formula or in the editor window, and type or say what to change, like "square the denominator" or "make it a cube root". An AI rewrites the formula, and Undo puts it back. Uses the MathLive cloud scanner.
• Quick Latex shorthands. Type al and Space for \alpha, sq for a square root, or your own shorthands, in the visual editor and in typed LaTeX. Imports your Quick Latex shortcuts and works alongside Latex Suite.
• Works on phones and tablets. The same editor and math keyboard run in Obsidian for iOS and Android. Scan a formula from a photo, either a new one from the camera or one from your library, or scan an image that is already in your note.
• Stays out of the way. Each formula has two small buttons: ✨ AI fill (with Magic edit) and ⤢ Expand. Everything is still plain LaTeX in your Markdown files.

Installation

1. In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins and turn on community plugins if you haven't yet.
2. Click Browse, search for MathLive, then click Install and Enable.

Or open MathLive in Obsidian directly. MathLive works in Obsidian 1.1.0 or newer, on desktop and on mobile (iPhone, iPad and Android).

Getting started

Edit a formula in your note. Write $x^2$ or a $$ block in Live Preview and click it. Type to edit, use the arrow keys to move in and out of the formula, click ✨ to fill it in from a screenshot, or ⤢ to expand it into the editor window. ✨ also opens the guide, which shows everything MathLive can do.

Use the editor window. Open the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P) and run MathLive: Add inline math or MathLive: Add full-line math. If you selected a formula first, the editor window opens with it. Click Insert or press Ctrl/Cmd + Enter to put it in your note.

Set a hotkey. If you write math often, assign hotkeys to the commands in Settings → Hotkeys.

New to LaTeX? Click ? in the editor window, or Help: how to… in the ✨ menu, and ask things like "how do I write a fraction" or "make a matrix". You get the answer right there, with a link to the exact section of the MathLive docs. The search runs on your device, so it works offline and sends nothing anywhere.

Coming from Quick Latex or Latex Suite?

MathLive keeps your typing habits and adds a visual editor and formula scanning on top.

• Quick Latex users. If Quick Latex was ever set up in your vault, MathLive offers once to import your shorthands. You can also turn on Quick Latex shorthands in Settings → MathLive (al → α, sq → √, bb → \mathbb and the rest of Quick Latex's defaults), add your own in Quick Latex's key:::LaTeX; format, or click Import from Quick Latex. In a formula, type a shorthand and press Space.
• Latex Suite users. Keep it. MathLive's shorthands work in its visual editor, and when Latex Suite (or Quick Latex) is on, MathLive leaves typed LaTeX between $ signs to it, so nothing expands twice. Shorthands in typed LaTeX in the settings changes this.

Scanning formulas

From the screen. Open the PDF, slide or image next to your note, put the cursor where the formula should go, and click ✨ in the left ribbon and pick Scan formula from screen (or run MathLive: Scan formula from screen, which you can give a hotkey). Obsidian steps aside and you drag a box around the formula anywhere on your screen, in Obsidian or in another app such as your browser or slides. Its LaTeX goes into the note at the cursor: as a math block on an empty line, or as inline math in a line of text. Press Esc to cancel. The editor window and a formula's ✨ menu have Scan from screen too, which adds the scan to that formula. On macOS, scanning other apps needs Screen Recording access for Obsidian; until then scans stay inside Obsidian's window and MathLive shows you where to turn it on. To always scan inside Obsidian only, turn off Scan other apps in the settings.

From the clipboard. Copy a screenshot of a formula, for example from another app or handwritten notes, then choose Scan clipboard image from ✨ AI fill in the editor window or next to a formula.

From a photo. On a phone or tablet, tap ✨ next to a formula, or in the editor window, and pick Scan a photo. Your device's image picker opens, where you can take a picture of a textbook or whiteboard or choose one from your photos. To put the formula in the note at the cursor, pick Scan a photo from ✨ in the ribbon, or run MathLive: Scan formula from a photo. On a computer, the same command scans an image file.

From an image in your note. Run MathLive: Scan formula from an image in this note, or right-click (on a phone, long-press) the line with the image and pick Scan this image with MathLive. The formula goes under the image as a math block. An image file's menu in the file list has Scan formula with MathLive too.

Check the result and fix anything the scanner got wrong.

Finding a formula

Put the cursor where the formula should go and run MathLive: Find a formula (or right-click in the note, or choose Find a formula from ✨ in the left ribbon, a formula's ✨ menu or the editor window). Type its name ("ideal gas law"), what it does ("energy of a moving object"), its name in your language ("Satz des Pythagoras"), or part of it in LaTeX (E=mc^2). Press Enter to insert the highlighted formula: as a math block on an empty line, as inline math in a line of text, or into the formula you opened it from. If you selected some words first, the search starts with them.

Searching is free and needs no account. The library comes from Wikidata's formulas, with clean LaTeX, names, variables and descriptions written and checked with AI, and it grows from the searches that find nothing. When nothing fits, the last choice is ✨ Write it with AI: Claude writes the formula for one scan, charged only when it comes back as valid LaTeX (free on paid plans).

Drawing a formula

Put the cursor where the formula should go, click ✨ in the left ribbon and pick Draw formula (or run MathLive: Draw formula). The editor window and a formula's ✨ menu have Draw formula too, which adds the drawing to that formula. Write the formula on the pad with your mouse, pen or finger; a moment after you lift the pen, the formula appears under the pad, where you can still fix it. Insert puts it in the note and uses one scan. Reading the drawing while you draw is free.

To draw on a phone or tablet instead, scan the QR code beside the pad with its camera, once. A drawing page opens in its browser, with nothing to install and no sign-in, and the phone stays paired with this Obsidian: across formulas, notes and restarts, until you unpair it. From then on, draw on the phone whenever Obsidian is open and tap Insert: the formula goes into the formula you're editing, or into your note at the cursor as a new one (with the Draw formula window open, into that window's formula, and you see it there as you draw). To get back to the drawing page later, open mathlive.danz.blog/draw on the phone, or add the page to its home screen. The page shows whether Obsidian is open; while it's closed, Insert waits and nothing is charged. Only the first browser to open a code can use it, and pairing a new phone replaces the one before. To pair a phone without opening Draw formula, or to unpair it, use Draw on your phone in MathLive's settings, or Unpair on the phone. With Self-hosted scanner on, the pad is read by your scanner and there is no QR code.

Converting a PDF to notes

Open a PDF and click Convert to notes at its top right. You can also click ✨ in the left ribbon and pick Convert a PDF to notes, or right-click a PDF in the file list. Pick the pages you want and click Convert. MathLive reads the pages one by one into a new note next to the PDF: text as Markdown, formulas as $...$ and $$...$$ you can edit, and a link back to each page of the PDF. The note fills in as pages finish. You can close the window; MathLive tells you when it's done.

On the free plan each page uses one scan. Paid plans include a number of pages each month (500 on Monthly, 300 on Lifetime), and you can buy more pages when you need them. Blank pages and pages that can't be read are free. Before converting, MathLive shows how many pages you have left; if the PDF is longer, it converts the first pages that fit and you can get more pages for the rest. A page that can't be read gets a warning in the note, and Retry failed pages fills it in later. Your self-hosted scanner can do this too if it answers /pages/ the way the MathLive scanner does.

You can scan with either of these:

The self-hosted scanner uses http://localhost:8502 unless you set another address in Self-hosted scanner address.

Settings

Disclosures

Obsidian asks plugins to state the following up front.

• Payment. The visual editor and formula search are free. Cloud scanning includes 3 trial scans, then 10 free scans per account and 5 more each month; unlimited scanning requires a paid plan from mathlive.danz.blog. Self-hosted scanning is free.
• Account. After 3 trial scans, cloud scanning requires a MathLive account (sign-in with Google). The editor and self-hosted scanning need no account.
• Network use. The plugin only connects to the internet for cloud scanning and finding formulas, and only after you start a scan, search for a formula or click Connect:
  • https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/trial gives a trial key on your first cloud scan when you have none.
  • https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/predict/ receives the image you chose to scan, with your key, and returns LaTeX.
  • https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/edit receives a formula you chose to Magic edit with your typed instruction or your voice recording, with your key, and returns the new formula.
  • https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/pages/ receives a picture of each PDF page you chose to convert, with your key, and returns the page as Markdown.
  • Draw formula opens a drawing session at https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/draw/sessions with your key and sends each drawing there to be read. The QR code is made on your computer and links the phone to https://mathlive.danz.blog/draw/.... While a phone is paired, the plugin keeps one request open there at a time (from https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/draw/sessions/<id>/wait), so the phone's formulas reach you while Obsidian is open; unpair it to stop. The server keeps only fingerprints of the keys of a pairing, and the kind of phone (such as "iPhone"), never what you draw.
  • https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/formulas/search receives what you type in Find a formula, without your key, and returns matching formulas. It always goes to MathLive's server, also with Self-hosted scanner on. The server keeps the text of searches that found nothing (without your key or address) for 180 days, to add the missing formulas.
  • https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/formulas/write receives your search text, with your key, when you choose Write it with AI, and returns the formula. Claude by Anthropic writes it.
  • https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/access-status is checked with your key to show your account, scans left, and pages left before converting a PDF.
  • Connecting opens https://mathlive.danz.blog/connect in your browser with this device's name (your vault's name and operating system). While you approve, the plugin asks https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/connect/claim every 2 seconds for up to 10 minutes. Disconnecting tells https://mathlive.danz.blog/ocr/connect/forget to delete this device's key.
  • Requests to MathLive's scanner also say what kind of device sent them (such as iPhone, Android or macOS), the plugin's version, and where a scanned image came from (clipboard, screen, photo, an image in the note, or a drawing), so we can tell which devices and features need work. These are logged with the scan, never with what was scanned.
  • With Self-hosted scanner on, scans go to the address you set (by default http://localhost:8502) instead of MathLive's servers.
• Clipboard. The plugin reads your clipboard only when you click a scan button, to get the image you copied.
• Camera and photos. Scan a photo opens your device's own image picker, which offers the camera on phones; the plugin never opens the camera itself. Only the photo you pick is sent to the scanner. Scan formula from an image in this note reads only the image you choose.
• Microphone. The plugin uses the microphone only while you record a Magic edit, from clicking the mic until you click it again (at most a minute). A recording that stays silent is not sent. The server turns the recording into text, then forgets it.
• Screen. Scanning from the screen takes a picture only when you start it: of the Obsidian window, or of the whole screen when you scan from another app. Only the box you draw is sent to the scanner; the rest of the picture never leaves your computer.
• Data. The scan server turns the image (or drawing) into LaTeX (or a PDF page into Markdown) and does not keep the image; Magic edit's formula, instruction and recording aren't kept either. Your account stores your email, your keys (with each connected device's name), your scan count and when a key was last used. A trial stores only a key and a one-way fingerprint of your IP address, to limit trials per network. Server logs record requests and errors to keep the service running.
• No telemetry or ads. The plugin does not track how you use it and shows no ads. A welcome window shows once after installing.

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to report a bug or build the plugin locally, and SECURITY.md to report a security issue privately. Every change runs an automated test suite in a real Obsidian app.

If MathLive saves you time, a ⭐ on this repository helps other people find it, and you can buy me a coffee.

Acknowledgements

• MathLive by Arno Gourdol, the math editor this plugin is built on
• LaTeX-OCR by Lukas Blecher, for self-hosted scanning
• QR Code Generator by Kazuhiko Arase (MIT), for Draw formula's QR code

License

MIT © Dan Zilberman