snipmd, an offline Mathpix Snip alternative for macOS

Description and use

snipmd is a free offline alternative to Mathpix Snip for macOS that uses GLM‑OCR to convert equation images into LaTeX, Markdown, CSV, or plain text quickly and locally.

Problem

Need to extract LaTeX from equations in PDFs or slides quickly without paid services or internet dependency.

Outcome

snipmd matched 48 benchmark equations with 0.5 s median latency, outperforming Mathpix Snip, LaTeX‑OCR, and Pix2Text on the same test set.

Workflow

• 1. Press global hotkey to activate macOS crosshair selector.
• 2. Drag to crop the equation image; crop is flattened onto white and padded.
• 3. GLM‑OCR (0.9B model) processes the image locally via MLX on Apple Silicon or Ollama on other machines.
• 4. Post‑processing strips code fences, normalizes delimiters, removes odd token spacing, and converts tables to Markdown/CSV.
• 5. Result is copied to clipboard, shown in a notification, and saved to a local history file.

Evidence

I kept running into the same small task: an equation sits in a PDF or a lecture slide, and I need it as LaTeX to paste into my notes or a paper.

Source

Mathpix Snip solves this well. Press a hotkey, drag a box, get LaTeX. The problem is the free plan stops at 10 snips a month, Pro costs 4.99 dollars a month, and every snip goes to their servers.

Source

snipmd matched all 48 after normalizing for equivalent notation, such as pmatrix versus a raw array. Median latency was 0.5 seconds from mouse release to clipboard, with the model already loaded.

Source

snipmd is free, MIT licensed, and runs entirely on your machine. The code, the benchmark, and a comparison with Mathpix Snip, LaTeX-OCR, and Pix2Text are on GitHub: https://github.com/Arthur031221/snipmd

Source