A fork of Overleaf, an open-source online real-time collaborative LaTeX editor.

Overleaf • Wiki • Contributing • Authors • License

Figure 1: A screenshot of a project being edited in Beaconleaf.

Community Edition

Beaconleaf is a fork of Overleaf, an open-source online real-time collaborative LaTeX editor. Overleaf runs a public hosted version at www.overleaf.com, but you can also run your own local version, and contribute to the development of Overleaf.

Caution

Overleaf Community Edition is intended for use in environments where all users are trusted. Community Edition is not appropriate for scenarios where isolation of users is required due to Sandbox Compiles not being available. When not using Sandboxed Compiles, users have full read and write access to the sharelatex container resources (filesystem, network, environment variables) when running LaTeX compiles.

For more information on Sandbox Compiles check out our documentation.

Beaconleaf vs Overleaf

Beaconleaf is a fork of Overleaf Community Edition with the following enhancements:

• Global Dark Mode: Site-wide dark theme support for improved user experience
• Administrator Tools: Enhanced administrative features for better server management
• Symbol Palette: Professional symbol palette similar to Overleaf Pro, providing quick access to mathematical and special characters
• New editor design: Enables Overleaf's new editor design on community edition (with a toggle of course)

Planned Features

The following features are planned for future releases:

• Enhanced admin tools (see online users)
• Sandboxed compiles
• Autocomplete of reference keys
• Template Gallery
• Git integration
• AI Features
• Google Drive Sync

Known Bugs

The following issues are currently known:

• In dark mode, changing the spacing between text editor and PDF will flashbang you
• In dark mode, opening a project also flashbangs you
• Project URL lookup says "Sorry, we can't find the page you are looking for."
• The "Lost connection" popup is not legible in dark mode

Building

Prerequisites

Before building, ensure that server-ce/Dockerfile has the correct base image tag:

ARG OVERLEAF_BASE_TAG=sharelatex/sharelatex-base:main

Important: Do not use sharelatex/sharelatex-base:latest as the base tag.

Build Steps

1. Build the base and community images:

cd server-ce
sudo make build-base
sudo make build-community

2. Build and start the Docker Compose stack:

sudo docker compose build
sudo docker compose up

Alternatively, you can combine all build steps into a single command:

sudo make build-base && sudo make build-community && sudo docker compose build && sudo docker compose up

Deployment

Backup Before Deployment

Always create a full backup before deploying updates to prevent data loss.

1. Stop the running stack to ensure MongoDB isn't mid-write:

cd /path/to/beaconleaf/data
docker compose -f /path/to/docker-compose.yml down

2. Create a complete backup archive (includes permissions, owners, symlinks, and all data):

tar -cvpzf /path/to/output/beaconleaf-backup-$(date +%F).tar.gz \
    sharelatex_data \
    mongo_data \
    redis_data

3. Optionally bring the stack back up:

docker compose -f /path/to/docker-compose.yml up -d

Updating Docker Compose Configuration

Before pulling and building updates, ensure your docker-compose.yml uses a build context instead of a pre-built image.

Replace this:

image: beaconleaf/sharelatex:texlive-full

With this:

build:
    context: .
    dockerfile: server-ce/Dockerfile

Deploying Updates

1. Pull the latest changes and build the updated images:

cd /path/to/compose
git pull
cd server-ce
sudo make build-base && sudo make build-community && sudo docker compose build

2. Start the updated stack:

sudo docker compose up -d

Installing Full TeX Live Scheme (Optional)

To install the full TeX Live scheme for comprehensive LaTeX package support:

1. Execute into the running container:

docker exec -it sharelatex bash

2. Install the full TeX Live scheme:

tlmgr install scheme-full
tlmgr path add

3. Commit the container with the full TeX Live installation to make it persistent:

docker commit sharelatex beaconleaf/sharelatex:texlive-full

4. Update docker-compose.yml to use the new image:

Replace this:

build:
    context: .
    dockerfile: server-ce/Dockerfile

With this:

image: beaconleaf/sharelatex:texlive-full

For more information on upgrading TeX Live, see the official Overleaf documentation.

Contributing

Please see the CONTRIBUTING file for information on contributing to the development of Overleaf.

Authors

The Overleaf Team

Vincent Wackler

License

The code in this repository is released under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, version 3. A copy can be found in the LICENSE file.

Copyright (c) Overleaf, 2014-2026.