I used Overleaf for my PhD thesis without any issues, including a lot of figures, etc. In fact, I almost only use Overleaf when it comes to LaTeX - it takes care of most of the pain points and is a great service that I pay for.
Although things like [Skim][1] exist, Basictex does most of what I need, so I've never really tried wiring it into my existing install.
Pipe dream - If the people who work on macOS's Preview application were smart, they would steal it (or [Marked's][2]) ability to have a custom processor for displaying output. In that case, I could point it at my TeX install and just run my Makefile from there.