No more FINAL_FINAL.tex chaos – tame your .tex, .bib, and graphics with an offline‐only LaTex Git workflow that follows you from MacBook/Windows to Linux, and back again.

A Little Backstory

I first went fully offline with LaTeX when my supervisor warned me that cloud-based editors can be vulnerable, and that my unpublished work deserved better protection. So I ditched Overleaf and installed TeXShop on my MacBook. Suddenly I had to learn to troubleshoot compilation errors by hand, no AI smoothing out my mistakes, so my LaTeX chops grew by leaps and bounds. And the payoff was that if it compiled on my Mac, it compiled for my reviewers, too. No one likes wrestling with “missing package” errors before they even read your text.

Once I’d mastered offline editing, another pain point emerged: version madness. Every draft spawned paper_V1.tex, paper_V2.tex, paper_FINALcopy.tex… you get the picture. And after the peer-review feedback for my first paper rolled in, I was spending half my day comparing the different versions, creating fresh folders, deleting .aux files, zipping up only the sources I wanted, and emailing them off. There had to be a better way!

Turns out, there is. You can use Git entirely offline. No GitHub, no public repos. Just you, your MacBook, and even a portable external drive that you can plug into your uni’s Linux workstation.

Here’s the guide I wish I’d had when I first made the switch.

1. Prerequisites

macOS (Homebrew installed) (I’m pretty sure Windows should work too)

Linux workstation (any distro, with USB access)

External drive (formatted HFS+, ext4, or exFAT so both OSs can read/write)

Basic comfort with the terminal (we’ll keep commands super straightforward!)

2. 💻 Install Git & latexdiff

On macOS

brew install git
brew install latexdiff

On Linux

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt update
sudo apt install git latexdiff

# Fedora/CentOS
sudo dnf install git latexdiff

3. 🎬 Start Your Local Git Repo

– Create your project folder

mkdir -p ~/Writing/my-paper
cd ~/Writing/my-paper

– Initialize it

git init

– Add your sources

git add *.tex *.bib images/
git commit -m "Initial LaTeX skeleton"

– .gitignore

The .gitignore file tells Git which files or directories it should leave out of version control – things like .aux, .log, or system files (.DS_Store) that you don’t want cluttering your repo. By listing those patterns in .gitignore, you keep your history and shared snapshots clean of build artifacts and temporary files.

Create a file named .gitignore. Creating and populating a .gitignore is as simple as making a new text file and listing the patterns you want Git to skip.

touch .gitignore              # makes an empty .gitignore file

You can use any text editor to edit this file, in the terminal or GUI. For example, with nano:

nano .gitignore

Then paste in your ignore rules. Save (Ctrl + O), then exit (Ctrl + X).

# LaTeX build artifacts
*.aux
*.log
*.toc
*.out
*.lof
*.lot
*.gz
*.pdf

# macOS metadata
.DS_Store

Then, tell Git to track that file and ignore everything you listed:

git add .gitignore
git commit -m "Ignore build artifacts"

Because your repo only tracks the files you actually need (and ignores all the build junk), any time you share or archive it – whether via git archive, a simple git clone, or a zip of the folder – you’ll get a clean bundle containing just your .tex, .bib, images, and any other source files. Your collaborators never have to wade through .aux or .log files.

4. ✍️ Your Everyday Editing Workflow

Edit paper.tex, references.bib, and graphics in TeXShop.

Decide which files belong in your next checkpoint. Maybe it’s just paper.tex , updated references file, and a graphic.

Stage changes. You’re telling Git, “Hey, include these exact changes in the next snapshot.” Git collects all the edits you’ve explicitly added into its index (a temporary holding area).

git add paper.tex references.bib images/fig3.png

Commit your snapshot with a clear message.
You’re saying, “Okay, Git—take everything in the index right now, bundle it up as a new version, and label it with this message.”

git commit -m "Clarified methods section; updated Fig. 3"

View history anytime:

git log --oneline

Quick Shortcuts

Commit all tracked file edits at once
If you’ve only modified files Git already knows about (no brand-new files), you can skip the separate add step with:

git commit -am "Your concise description of what changed"

The -a flag auto-stages any modified or deleted tracked files before the commit.

Stage everything – new, changed, or deleted files – in one go.

git add -A
git commit -m "Everything up to date"

That’s handy when you want to snapshot “all the things” without naming each file.

5. 🔍 Seeing “What Changed”

Plain-Text Diff

git diff        # your working edits vs. last commit
git diff --staged  # staged changes vs. last commit

LaTeX-Aware PDF Diff

latexdiff-vc --git paper.tex > diff.tex
pdflatex diff.tex
open diff.pdf   # or xdg-open on Linux

Your resulting PDF highlights insertions in blue and deletions in red – ideal for spotting exactly what has changed between versions.

6. 🛡️ Back Up on Your External Drive

We’ll keep a bare Git repo on the drive so you can push/pull from both machines.

Create a bare repo on your USB drive (e.g. /Volumes/Backup/tex-repo.git):

cd /Volumes/Backup
mkdir tex-repo.git
cd tex-repo.git
git init --bare

Add it as a remote in your MacBook project:

cd ~/Writing/my-paper
git remote add usb /Volumes/Backup/tex-repo.git
git push usb main

On Linux, clone from the drive:

git clone /mnt/backup/tex-repo.git ~/Writing/my-paper
cd ~/Writing/my-paper

Work & commit on Linux, then:

git push origin main

Back on macOS, update with:

git pull usb main

7. 📦 Sharing a Clean Snapshot

When you need to send your supervisors the current source bundle, no .aux files, no .log cruft, just run:

cd ~/Writing/my-paper
git archive --format=zip --output=paper-for-review.zip HEAD

That ZIP contains only your tracked .tex, .bib, and images/ folders and nothing else.

8. 🎯 Tips & Tricks

– Branch for big rewrites:

git checkout -b discussion-rewrite
# …edit…
git commit -m "Revamped discussion section"
git checkout main
git merge discussion-rewrite

– Tag milestones:

git tag -a v1.0 -m "Submitted first draft"
git push usb --tags

– Recover an old file:

git show HEAD~2:paper.tex > old-intro.tex

Now, you can to track every edit, compare changes, backup your repo, and share polished source bundles with your supervisors, colleagues, or publishers, like a pro! No more “which file was the real FINAL,” and no more manual folder clean-ups before sharing. Now you can focus on the words, and let Git handle the rest. And all of that, offline, in case you are, like me, concerned about safeguarding your intellectual property.

9. 🖼️ Organizing & Tracking Your Figures

Keeping all of your graphics in one place, and teaching both Git and LaTeX to find them, makes your workflow smoother.

Create a dedicated folder

my-paper/
├ paper.tex
├ references.bib
└ images/
    ├ fig1_overview.png
    ├ fig2_results.pdf
    └ diagram.svg

Tell LaTeX where to look.

In your preamble (before \begin{document}), add:

\usepackage{graphicx}
\graphicspath{{images/}}

Now you can write:

\includegraphics[width=0.8\linewidth]{fig2_results.pdf}

without needing images/fig2_results.pdf each time.

Stage them all at once.

Whenever you add, update, or delete a graphic, simply:

git add images/
git commit -m "Add/update figures"

Git will pick up every new or changed file in images/ in one go.

Keep names descriptive & version-friendly.

fig3_experiment1.png instead of image3.png.

Avoid spaces or special characters.

If you need a revised version, overwrite the old file (Git still stores the history).

With this setup, LaTeX compiles seamlessly, Git tracks every figure, and you never have to juggle per-file adds or fight with relative paths again. Your images folder becomes a single source of truth, both for you and for anyone you share your repo with.

💌 Want More?

I’d love to hear what tools or setups you’re using! Drop a comment below, shoot me an email, or say hi on YouTube.