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Underleaf

Copilot that turns handwritten notes, screenshots, and PDFs into clean LaTeX code, with in-editor writing and citation tools for academics.

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Product Overview

What is Underleaf?

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Underleaf is a writing assistant built specifically for LaTeX and academic documents. Instead of manually typing equations, tables, or entire papers, users can photograph handwritten notes, paste a screenshot, or upload a PDF and get accurate, compilable LaTeX back within seconds, with recognition accuracy the team reports above 95%. Beyond conversion, Underleaf layers AI editing on top of the writing process itself: it rewrites and tightens academic prose, suggests grammar fixes, and surfaces relevant citations from arXiv without breaking the writer's flow. The product ships as a browser side panel and a Chrome extension that overlays directly onto Overleaf, Google Docs, and arXiv, plus a standalone web app with more than 20 specialized tools for tasks like PDF-to-LaTeX, table generation, and format conversion between LaTeX, Typst, and Markdown. It is used by over 50,000 academics across 100+ institutions, including Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, and Harvard.


Key Features

  • Handwriting & Screenshot OCR

    Captures equations, tables, or handwritten notes from any webpage or photo and returns accurate, ready-to-use LaTeX code.

  • PDF and arXiv Conversion

    Converts full academic PDFs or arXiv papers into clean LaTeX source while preserving equations, figures, and document structure.

  • In-Editor AI Writing Assistant

    Adds a toolbar to Overleaf and other editors for one-click rewriting, grammar correction, and shifting text to a more academic tone.

  • Citation Finder

    Searches arXiv semantically based on your paragraph content and inserts properly formatted, up-to-date citations with BibTeX export.

  • Compiled Live Preview

    Renders LaTeX on a real compiler inside the panel so users can check typeset output before copying it as text or a crisp image.

  • Extended Academic Toolkit

    Bundles 20+ additional tools such as TikZ diagram generation, table builders, thesis/abstract generators, and LaTeX-Typst-Markdown converters.


Use Cases

  • Research Paper Drafting : Researchers convert handwritten derivations and figures into LaTeX while using AI editing to polish prose for journal submission.
  • Lecture Note Digitization : Students and professors turn photographed whiteboard notes or slides into typeset LaTeX study materials in seconds.
  • Journal & Conference Formatting : Authors reformat manuscripts to match specific templates like IEEE, Springer, Elsevier, Nature, NeurIPS, or ACL.
  • Literature Review Support : Writers paste draft paragraphs to instantly surface relevant arXiv citations and export them as BibTeX entries.
  • Course Material Creation : Instructors generate syllabi, problem sets, and academic CVs directly in LaTeX using structured templates.
  • Overleaf Workflow Enhancement : Teams already writing in Overleaf add AI editing, equation generation, and citation search directly inside their existing editor.

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