Mobile & ChromeOS

People often ask how to run TeX on a phone, a tablet, or a Chromebook. Honestly, none of these is as smooth as a desktop. Each platform differs sharply in whether a native engine runs at all — and whether it is practical even when it does. This page lays out realistic choices for ChromeOS, Android, and iOS / iPadOS without sugar-coating them. The short version: for most people the web editors — Overleaf and Cloud LaTeX — are the most reliable path.

Consider the web first

The biggest reality of TeX on mobile is that running an engine locally buys you little. Compilation is CPU- and disk-heavy; on a phone or tablet it is slow and space-hungry. By contrast, anything with a browser can use a web editor that keeps a full TeX Live on the server.

Overleaf lets you edit, compile, and view the PDF entirely in the browser, with real-time collaboration. Cloud LaTeX (by Acaric), strong on Japanese, likewise gives you upLaTeX or LuaLaTeX with no setup. Neither installs anything on the device, so a Chromebook, an iPad, and an Android phone all behave the same, screen size permitting. The linked pages cover them in depth — the rest of this page is the realistic route for those who still want a native, on-device engine.

ChromeOS (Crostini)

ChromeOS is the most fortunate of the three, thanks to Google’s official Linux development environment (codename Crostini), which spins up a Debian Linux container inside the Chromebook. There you install TeX Live almost exactly as on any Linux box. Enable it first: Settings → Advanced → Developers → “Linux development environment” → Turn on. The first run downloads and builds the container (a few minutes); afterwards the “Terminal” app works (the container is named penguin by default).

Open the terminal and update the package list first. Because Crostini is Debian, you have the same two routes as on Linux — install via **Debian’s apt, or via TUG’s official install-tl.**

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

# 道その1: Debian のパッケージから（手軽）
#   日本語まで含めてフルに入れるなら texlive-full（数 GB）
sudo apt install texlive-full
#   最小構成なら texlive-base などを選ぶ

The apt version is convenient but frozen at Debian’s snapshot, so it can lag a little behind upstream. If you **want the newest TeX Live and per-package control via tlmgr, use TUG’s official installer instead. Here is how to install TeX Live 2026** (released 1 March 2026).

# 道その2: TUG 公式の install-tl（最新版・tlmgr が使える）
sudo apt install perl wget
wget https://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
tar xzf install-tl-unx.tar.gz
cd install-tl-*
sudo perl ./install-tl --no-interaction

Either way, the resulting PDF is byte-for-byte what you would get on a desktop (the same engine does the work). Two caveats. The Crostini container is sandboxed, so files outside the “Linux files” folder — Google Drive, Downloads, and so on — are not visible by default; share them from the Files app or copy them into the container. You can also install an editor as a Linux app (just sudo apt install inside the container). Since the steps mirror plain Linux, the desktop page applies here too.

Android (Termux)

On Android you can run the Linux build of TeX Live almost unchanged inside the terminal app Termux, which creates a small Linux-like environment and installs software through its own pkg manager (apt under the hood). One crucial note: install Termux from F-Droid or GitHub, not Google Play. The Play Store build is officially unmaintained — it runs afoul of Android’s security model (the API-level-29 restrictions) — and is missing functionality and carries bugs.

After installing Termux, update it and grant storage access. A minimal TeX Live is a single command — pkg install texlive — but it ships only a trimmed package set. For a fuller or newer install, add texlive-installer and run the official installer (install-tl).

pkg update && pkg upgrade
termux-setup-storage          # 共有ストレージへのアクセスを許可

# 最小構成（手軽・容量小）
pkg install texlive

# あるいは公式インストーラで（最新版・大きい）
pkg install texlive-installer
# 続けて install-tl を実行してスキームを選ぶ

The constraints, stated plainly: compilation is slow (often likened to a netbook from years ago), and it is large — roughly 600 MB minimal, 2–3 GB for a full scheme — with the occasional “file not found” glitch during package updates. That said, the engines are the real pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX, and LuaLaTeX, and the output PDF equals a desktop’s. For Japanese you must set up the needed packages and font maps via tlmgr. If you just want to write quickly and compile reliably, a web editor is the safer bet than going deep into Termux.

iOS / iPadOS

iPhone and iPad are the most constrained platform. iOS / iPadOS does not let users freely install and run arbitrary programs, and there is no general-purpose Linux environment equivalent to Android’s Termux. So treat “just install TeX Live” as effectively impossible here. Instead, a few App Store apps bundle a TeX engine of their own, and that is the only realistic way to typeset natively.

The flagship app with a built-in engine is Texifier (formerly Texpad). You edit LaTeX on the device and typeset offline, on board — it handles the staples such as BibTeX, TikZ, and beamer, pulling in only the packages you actually use (for an obscure package you don’t have locally, you can fall back to a full TeX Live on its free cloud servers). It is a paid app and shares its design with the Mac edition.

App names, availability, prices, and supported engines change over time. Always check the App Store and the developer’s site for the current state before committing — there are other apps advertising display typesetting and xelatex / lualatex support beyond any named here. And to repeat: if you want to write reliably on an iPad, the browser-based Overleaf / Cloud LaTeX are in the end the most dependable choice. Paired with an external keyboard, they make a perfectly usable writing environment.

At a glance, by platform

In sum: for a serious native setup, the Chromebook is comfortably ahead; Android works if you put in effort with Termux; iOS / iPadOS depends on bundled-engine apps — and on any device, when in doubt, a web editor is the right answer.