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I use LaTeX on my Macbook through VSCode and the LaTeX workshop extension. This lets me edit my documents with a real time preview. I don't use (and have no plan to) any of the other programs that were installed when I downloaded LaTeX on my machine. Specifically, I would like to get rid of TeX Live Utility but there is also TeXShop and LaTeXiT that I would like to remove.

I am not sure how LaTeX installations work in terms of structure, but would it be safe to delete these files from my Applications folder? Or would this cause issues with my LaTeX installation(s)?

Alan Munn
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dark-walrus
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1 Answers1

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TeX Live Utility is a GUI wrapper for tlmgr which allows you to keep your distribution up-to-date. It will not cause any problems to delete it, but it only takes 120 Mb of space, and is extremely useful. See

for an explanation of how to use it and what it does.

If you do decide to delete it, then you must use sudo tlmgr from the command line to update your distribution. Personally, this is not something that I ever do, despite the fact that I do many other things from the command line. TeX Live Utility is a great app, and I really don't see any reason not to use it.

TeXShop is a great editor, but if you're happy with VSCode then by all means delete it. LaTeXit is also a useful app, although it can easily be replicated with the standalone class, so this is the least useful of the included apps in my opinion.

You didn't mention BibDesk, but if you plan to use bibtex at all for your writing, then it is another excellent app included with MacTeX that I would not recommend deleting.

Alan Munn
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