During the last weeks, I developed Edist, a native macOS Typst editor that bundles all the Typst tools (compiler, live preview, completion, …). I dont like using vsCode, and I very much like using native apps. The idea is not to replace the official webapp but to have a native-feeling macOS Typst editor to edit offline, without collaborative features. I hope the “bundled in one app” approach and a beautiful app will help Typst adoption.
Features
Beautiful and native editor with syntax highlighting, useful shortcuts (for bold, italic, …), good performances, find and replace, animated caret…
live preview (as fast as the Typst website, feels native) with automatic resizing, quick export to PDF, self-window mode (perfect for multi-screen)
Jump between editor & preview by clicking in the preview to go to matching text in the editor. Editing in the editor jumps to the corresponding part in the preview.
Automatic online package imports (no setup just import packages in your typst file) / local library imports (import local libraries, add local libraries)
Errors handling (error panel in the sidebar + inline error indicators)
Machine fonts can be used without any setup
Layout in the sidebar
Handwritten math symbols recognition (draw symbol and it gives the Typst markup)
Typst preview lock : lock the preview on a Typst file, very useful if you are using multiple documents (ex: one per chapter)
And more…
Pricing
This software is not free. There is a 7-day no-login trial for testing, and then you must pay 10€ (release price, 20€ in some weeks) for lifetime upgrades. This is always a hard decision to make software paying, especially when backed by an open-source community. Here is why I took this decision:
I am still a student, and developing Mac apps comes at a cost (i.e the 100€ to notarize apps )
It is better for long-term support
There are alternatives like tinymist + VSCode which are very good. I am not gatekeeping
I hope it can help fellow reasearchers / students! You can download it on edist.app. Suggestions and feedbacks are welcomed, the idea is to make this app a standard.
Edist is pretty solid and well put together. All of its features are easily discovered. The app is even signed with the developer’s signature. Very professional indeed.
A fine feature is the symbols pane. I do a lot of math typesetting and I kept having to visit the Typst Documention web site to figure out the name of the symbol I needed. No more! With Edist I can look it up and also just draw the symbol and it tries to figure out what I need. Freaking awesome.
Especially welcome is when you click on a parenthesis, Edist blinks the one it matches.
Students these days are making amazing things. Back when I was in school we had to type up our FORTRAN programs on punched cards! Haw!
I have only explored a little, so far, and very much like what I see. In case it helps, I am using an M2Pro Mac Mini, running MacOS 26.5.1
I have three initial comments:
Although the app launches fine with the welcome screen coming up, the only way I have found to open an existing .typ is by navigating from the welcome screen. Even with Edist already running in the background opening a .typ from Finder by right-clicking and choosing Open with doesn’t show Edist as one of the apps that can open it; even choosing Other and setting it to All Applications and choosing Edist brings up a warning on the dialog saying: It’s not known if this application can open “main.typ”.
Given the above, it would be great if when one wants to switch projects, closing a single open window would automatically launch the welcome screen, rather than just revealing the desktop, thereby requiring you to go the menu bar and choosing New Welcome Window or calling it up by keystroke (I have my menu bar hidden).
As for “… Editing in the editor jumps to the corresponding part in the preview”, I am having difficulty getting it to work smoothly on a project built as a main.typ which basically contains layout code and #include "Chapter n" calls, for example, with all the text in the chapter files… a typical structure for a book project. Clearly, I need to experiment more with the combination of settings in the Preview menu.
Anyway, those are thoughts after a first couple of hours of trying it. Point 1 is the most important I think; 2 would be nice; 3 is probably just getting the required settings clear.
)