Does Excalidraw support LaTeX?

Not in a release. The latest version, v0.18.1 (April 2026), has no math support. LaTeX works in the preview build at math.preview.excalidraw.com, which runs the unmerged pull request #6037, and in add-ons such as the Obsidian Excalidraw plugin and ExcaliMath.

How do I write a math equation in Excalidraw?

On excalidraw.com, render the formula as an SVG in any equation editor and paste or drag it onto the canvas, or type simple formulas with Unicode characters such as x², ∑ and ≤. For real LaTeX on the canvas, use math.preview.excalidraw.com, the Obsidian Excalidraw plugin, ExcaliMath, or an Excalidraw app with a LaTeX editor in Confluence or Jira.

What is math.preview.excalidraw.com?

It is the preview deployment of pull request #6037, which adds LaTeX and AsciiMath through MathJax. You choose the Math tool and type LaTeX between $ and $. It is not a release: users report it lags behind excalidraw.com in features, and some worry their links to it will stop working when the change is merged.

Can I edit an equation after I add it to Excalidraw?

Only if the formula was added as math, not as a picture. The preview build, the Obsidian plugin, ExcaliMath and the Confluence and Jira apps keep the LaTeX source, so you can open it and change it. A pasted SVG or PNG is just an image: keep the LaTeX source next to it so you can render it again.

Does the Obsidian Excalidraw plugin support LaTeX?

Yes. Run the command palette action "Insert LaTeX formula". To change a formula, open it in Markdown view or Ctrl/Cmd-click it on the canvas.

Can I use LaTeX in Excalidraw in Confluence or Jira?

Yes, with an app that ships a LaTeX editor. Excalidraw Math Equations & LaTeX Whiteboard for Confluence and for Jira typeset formulas with MathJax inside the whiteboard, keep the source editable and store everything in your Atlassian site.

Excalidraw Math & LaTeX: Every Way to Add Equations in 2026

You are sketching a model on Excalidraw. Boxes, arrows, a hand-drawn threshold line — and then the formula that ties it together: s = 1 / (1 + e^{-z}). You look for an equation tool. There isn’t one. You type the formula as text, and the superscript sits on the baseline like a typo.

That moment is common enough to have a history. The first request for math in Excalidraw was opened in April 2020. A pull request with MathJax support has been waiting since December 2022. As of 24 October 2026 the latest release, v0.18.1, still cannot typeset an equation.

Short answer: Excalidraw has no built-in LaTeX. You have six practical options:

You work in…	Use	Equation stays editable
excalidraw.com, once in a while	an SVG of the formula, pasted in	no — keep the source
excalidraw.com, simple formulas	Unicode characters (x², ∑, ≤)	yes, it is text
a browser, math-heavy notes	math.preview.excalidraw.com	yes
Obsidian	the Excalidraw plugin’s “Insert LaTeX formula”	yes
your own web app, or offline	ExcaliMath	yes
Confluence or Jira	an Excalidraw app with a LaTeX editor	yes

The rest of this guide explains each one, what it costs you, and why the native feature is taking so long. At the end there are formulas ready to paste.

Why Excalidraw has no LaTeX button yet

We went through the Excalidraw repository on GitHub and counted. The request is old, popular and still open:

$Timeline of math support in the excalidraw/excalidraw GitHub repository. April 2020: issue 1176 asks for math equations, 35 upvotes, now closed. February 2021: pull request 2993 adds MathJax support. June 2022: issue 5265 asks for LaTeX rendering, 73 upvotes and 42 comments, still open. December 2022: pull request 6037 replaces 2993 and is previewed at math.preview.excalidraw.com, still open. September 2025: issue 10011 asks for KaTeX or LaTeX again, still open. April 2026: the ExcaliMath plugin adds KaTeX outside Excalidraw. August 2026: pull request 11931 proposes dollar-sign math in text elements, still open with no review. October 2026: release v0.18.1 has no math. Source: GitHub, counted 24 October 2026.$

Issue #1176, “Support for writing / rendering math equations”, opened 3 April 2020: 35 upvotes, 22 comments.
Pull request #2993, February 2021: MathJax rendering through a new “Math” tool. It was closed in December 2022 and “Replaced by #6037.”
Issue #5265, “Add LaTeX rendering support”, June 2022: 73 upvotes and 42 comments — the main place people ask, and still open.
Pull request #6037, “Support LaTeX and AsciiMath via MathJax”, December 2022: 49 comments, still open. On 16 October 2026 a user wrote: “4 years later, one still can’t use Excalidraw for math notes…”
Pull request #11931, August 2026: a smaller design, described below. Open, with no review yet.

The two pull requests show why this is hard. #6037 adds a new kind of element — the author’s “subtypes” system — so math becomes a first-class object. That touches the core data model of a project with 134,000 GitHub stars and many apps built on its file format. #11931 goes the other way: “Text elements whose content is wrapped in $…$ (inline) or $$…$$ (display) are typeset as math equations”, with no new element type, so “older clients … simply show the raw source”. The price is size: its author notes the MathJax engine is “~611 kB gzip”, loaded the first time someone uses math.

Until one of them is merged, every option below is a workaround. They differ in what you give up.

1. math.preview.excalidraw.com: the official preview

What it is. The preview deployment of pull request #6037, hosted by the Excalidraw project. In the pull request thread the author asks people to “use #5265 to report any bugs you find while using https://math.preview.excalidraw.com/”.

How to use it. Choose the Math tool and type LaTeX between the delimiters. The original pull request describes them: “The delimiters are the usual ’$’ and ’$’ for Latex, and backward tick marks (’`’) for AsciiMath.” So $\frac{a}{b}$ is a fraction, and `a/b` is the same fraction in AsciiMath, the simpler notation meant for people who don’t know LaTeX. A Math only mode renders the whole element as math, which suits aligned and cases blocks.

What it costs you. It is a branch, not a product:

It falls behind excalidraw.com. In October 2025 a user noted that “lasso selection is not available”.
Links may not last. The same user worried that “all my math preview permalinks may fail once it’s merged”. Save important scenes as .excalidraw files, not only as links.
In February 2026 a user reported that SVG exports clip subscripts at the bottom (a_1), and used a sed command to add overflow="visible" as a fix.

Use it when you want real LaTeX in a browser, today, for notes or teaching, and you keep your own copies of the files.

2. Obsidian Excalidraw plugin

If your diagrams live in Obsidian, this is the easiest option. The Obsidian Excalidraw plugin (7,774 stars, release 2.29.0 on 12 October 2026) has LaTeX built in. From its README: “Insert LaTeX formulas using the Command Palette action ‘Insert LaTeX formula’. You can edit formulas either in Markdown view or by CTRL/CMD + Click on the formula.”

What it costs you. It only exists inside Obsidian. A colleague who opens the scene on excalidraw.com will not get the same editing experience.

Use it when your notes are already in Obsidian.

3. ExcaliMath: a KaTeX companion plugin

ExcaliMath was announced in April 2026. It “wraps — never forks — the @excalidraw/excalidraw React component” and adds “LaTeX authoring via KaTeX with live preview and click-to-edit”, a toolbar for fractions, integrals and matrices, function graphs and STEM shape libraries. There is a desktop app whose features “work fully offline”. The README promises that you can “save and reopen .excalidraw files with equations and graphs intact”.

What it costs you. It is not excalidraw.com. You run the desktop app, or build it into your own React app (npm install, npm run dev). It is a young project (MIT licence, 38 stars on 7 November 2026).

Use it when you build your own whiteboard on Excalidraw, or want a math-first desktop whiteboard.

Self-host ExcaliMath in Docker

ExcaliMath ships no Docker image and no Dockerfile, but its web demo is a plain Vite build: static files any web server can serve. We built it in Docker on 7 November 2026 from the latest commit (5b43096, 5 April 2026) and served it with nginx. It worked on the first try, with one catch: the page still loaded code and fonts from the internet. Excalidraw 0.17 fetches its fonts and a vendor script from unpkg.com, and the demo’s index.html links the KaTeX stylesheet from cdn.jsdelivr.net. On a closed network the canvas would load without them.

Excalidraw’s own docs give the fix: copy the excalidraw-assets folder to your server and set window.EXCALIDRAW_ASSET_PATH. This Dockerfile does that, and serves KaTeX’s CSS and fonts locally too:

# ExcaliMath web demo, pinned commit, no CDN calls at runtime
FROM node:22-alpine AS build
WORKDIR /src
RUN wget -qO- https://github.com/tamerUAE/excalimath/archive/5b43096b82c8157b99ec6bea1973886eac3538f7.tar.gz \
  | tar xz --strip-components=1
# --ignore-scripts: no install scripts from dependencies run during the build
RUN npm ci --ignore-scripts --no-audit --no-fund
RUN npm run build
RUN cp -r node_modules/@excalidraw/excalidraw/dist/excalidraw-assets apps/demo/dist/ \
 && mkdir -p apps/demo/dist/katex \
 && cp -r node_modules/katex/dist/katex.min.css node_modules/katex/dist/fonts apps/demo/dist/katex/ \
 && sed -i 's#https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/katex.min.css#/katex/katex.min.css#; s#<head>#<head><script>window.EXCALIDRAW_ASSET_PATH = "/";</script>#' apps/demo/dist/index.html

FROM nginx:1.29-alpine
COPY --from=build /src/apps/demo/dist /usr/share/nginx/html
EXPOSE 80

docker build -t excalimath .
docker run -d --name excalimath -p 127.0.0.1:8080:80 excalimath

Open http://127.0.0.1:8080, select the ∑ button and type LaTeX. Our test formula \int_0^1 x^2\,dx = \frac{1}{3} was typeset on the canvas, and the browser made 10 requests, all to our own server: no request left the machine. The final image is 102 MB.

Three things to know before you put it in front of a team. It is the demo app, so drawings live in that browser only; there is no sharing or storage server. Pinning the commit keeps the build repeatable; read the changes before you move the pin. And -p 127.0.0.1:8080:80 keeps it on your own machine; put it behind your usual proxy and sign-in before you open it to anyone else.

4. Render the formula and paste it as an SVG

This works on plain excalidraw.com, with no add-ons. Excalidraw accepts images; its source lists the types: SVG, PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, BMP, ICO, AVIF and JFIF.

Typeset the formula in any equation editor that exports SVG (prefer SVG to PNG: it stays sharp when you zoom or resize).
Paste it, or drag the file onto the canvas.
Put the LaTeX source next to it — in a small text element, or in the image’s link field — so you can render it again later.

What it costs you. The formula is now a picture. To change one sign you render it again and replace the image. In his 2023 write-up on bulk-importing lecture equations into Excalidraw, Baptiste notes that these equations can’t be edited on the canvas. His post is also the place to look if you need to import hundreds of equations at once.

Use it when you need a formula or two in a diagram that otherwise lives on excalidraw.com.

5. Unicode characters for simple formulas

Many formulas on a whiteboard are short: x² + y² = r², Δt ≤ 5 s, ∑ xᵢ. Unicode has the characters, and Excalidraw text accepts them. You can edit them like any text, and they survive copy, paste and export.

Need	Characters
Powers	⁰ ¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹ ⁿ ⁱ ⁺ ⁻
Indices	₀ ₁ ₂ ₃ ₄ ₅ ₆ ₇ ₈ ₉ ₙ ᵢ ⱼ
Operators	× ÷ ± ∓ · √ ∑ ∏ ∫ ∂ ∇
Relations	= ≠ ≈ ≡ ≤ ≥ ≪ ≫ ∝ → ⇒ ⇔
Sets	∈ ∉ ⊂ ⊆ ∪ ∩ ∅ ℝ ℕ ℤ
Greek	α β γ δ ε θ λ μ π σ φ ω Δ Σ Ω
Other	∞ ° ′ ″ ½ ¼ ¾

What it costs you. There is no layout: no stacked fractions, roots over long expressions, matrices or limits under a sum. Not every font has every symbol either — adding characters to Excalidraw’s hand-drawn font is still an open request. If a symbol looks wrong, switch that text to another font in the font picker.

Use it when the formula fits on one line.

6. Excalidraw with LaTeX in Confluence and Jira

Teams often draw their diagrams on Confluence pages and Jira issues, not on excalidraw.com, and an Atlassian app can ship its own editors. We make one: Excalidraw Math Equations & LaTeX Whiteboard for Confluence and the same app for Jira.

How it works:

In the whiteboard you open the LaTeX Math editor, type the formula and see a live preview. If the LaTeX is wrong, the preview names the error (for example “Missing close brace”) and Insert stays disabled.
The formula is typeset with MathJax and placed on the canvas in its real proportions. You can draw arrows and notes around it.
The LaTeX source is stored with the drawing. Update reopens it, and the formula keeps its place and scale.
The same whiteboard has Mermaid, Graphviz, Vega-Lite charts and WaveDrom, so a formula can sit next to the chart or flowchart it explains.
Everything is stored in your Atlassian site and rendered in the browser. The app makes no external calls. Exporting a Confluence page to PDF or Word includes the diagram.

What it costs you. It works only in Confluence or Jira Cloud, and editing at the same time is protected against conflicts but is not live co-editing.

Use it when the formula belongs with a team’s specs, models or tickets. You can try it free on the Atlassian Marketplace (Jira version). For formulas inside the text of a Confluence page rather than on a whiteboard, see LaTeX in Confluence: 14 math macro apps compared. To choose an Excalidraw app for Confluence by price, permissions and where it keeps your drawing, see Confluence Excalidraw: 12 apps compared.

Formulas ready to paste

These work in MathJax and KaTeX, so they work in options 1, 2, 3 and 6. For the preview build, put each one between $ and $, or use Math only.

What	LaTeX
Fraction	`\frac{a+b}{2}`
Sigmoid	`\sigma(z) = \frac{1}{1 + e^{-z}}`
Sum with limits	`\sum_{i=1}^{n} x_i`
Integral	`\int_{0}^{\infty} e^{-x}\,dx = 1`
Root	`x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}`
Matrix	`\begin{pmatrix} a & b \\ c & d \end{pmatrix}`
Cases	`f(x) = \begin{cases} 1 & x \ge 0 \\ 0 & x < 0 \end{cases}`
Aligned steps	`\begin{aligned} y &= 2(x+1) \\ &= 2x + 2 \end{aligned}`
Big-O	`O(n \log n)`
Probability	`P(A \mid B) = \frac{P(B \mid A)\,P(A)}{P(B)}`

Three tips that save time on a whiteboard:

Keep formulas short and split them. One equation per element is easier to place, align and connect with arrows than a long block.
Use \, for thin spaces (as in dx above) and \text{...} for words inside a formula.
Keep the source. Whatever the method, store the LaTeX somewhere you can copy it from, even for formulas you pasted as images.

Which one should you pick?

You need one formula on excalidraw.com, now: Unicode if it fits on one line; otherwise an SVG.
You take math notes in a browser: math.preview.excalidraw.com, and save the files.
Your notes are in Obsidian: the plugin’s “Insert LaTeX formula”.
You are building a product on Excalidraw: look at ExcaliMath, or follow #6037 and #11931.
Your team documents in Confluence or tracks work in Jira: Excalidraw Math for Confluence or for Jira.

If native support lands in Excalidraw, we will update this guide. The quickest way to see when is to watch issue #5265.