Pages about Emacs, the best editor platform ever.
Why is it called “Emacs”? It enables making awesome computer stuff. If you use Emacs, it will elicit massive analytical cognitive success, and you can then engineer magical and critical software.
- The official Emacs website. Note: They capitalize the “E” in “Emacs” even if “Emacs” is in the middle of a sentence; so should you.
- Documentation page here. Here are links to the index pages for:
- GNU Emacs manual
- An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp
- Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
- Every time I need to make a macro, I have to go back to the docs, so here is the page on making a macro.
- The source code for Emacs is here, with a web interface here, and a mirror on Gitblub here. I wonder if there are plans to mirror on Codeberg in addition to or instead of Gitblub.
- A couple of Wikis: Emacs wiki and Wikemacs.
- Emacs Stack Exchange.
- Emacs subreddit. And if Reddit ever gets too bad, there is a Lemmy community for Emacs as well as one for Planet Emacs. Emacs has a page on Lobsters. And another site called Communick.
- Org mode docs at orgmode site.
- Org mode subreddit.
- Planet Emacs subreddit, new website and Mastodon page.
- The Emacs hashtag on the Tilde.zone Mastodon server.
- Emacs news from Sacha Chua. She is also the organizer of EmacsConf.
- Emacs News on the emacs.social Mastodon server.
- Emacs Docs – One stop shop with docs for Emacs, Emacs Lisp, Org Mode, Magit, and AucTEX (which I had never heard of). All of these have docs at their own sites, but this site puts them all in one place and in one format. As of 2025-02-07, this page has not been updated since 2021-12-30 per the Gitblub repo.
There is also a site called Emacs Docs with the domain ending in “.com”. This site only has the docs for the main editor online, and the copyright date is 2022. I was not able to find a link to the source, and I have no idea if it is related to the .org site. - A few pages from the Mastering Emacs site by Mickey Petersen: “Beginner’s Guide to Emacs“, a “Reading Guide“, and an index to all the articles. Usually he writes a page for each new release going over the changes.
- The Awesome Emacs Gitblub page with link to libraries, themes, and starter kits (ie: stuff you can use out of the box). The Awesome Elisp page has links to Elisp libraries and Elisp tutorials (ie: stuff you can use to make more stuff that other people can use out of the box).
- Eshell: The manual, the famous article on Mastering Emacs, a page on EmacsWiki, a page on WikEmacs. Like “Emacs”, Eshell should always be capitalized. Germans everywhere rejoice.
- Irreal posts almost every day. Many of them are about Emacs. A few of my blog posts have been featured there.
- While one nice thing about Emacs is that some things do not change, Emacs is still evolving. Here is a post from 2024-12-14 about changes in Emacs over the past decade.
- If you want to search for packages, here are the links for GNU ELPA, NonGNU ELPA, MELPA (Milkypostman’s Emacs Lisp Package Archive) and MELPA Stable.
Some Emacs cheat sheets:
- Bob Rogers’ cheat sheet (he also has an interesting page on Common Lisp).
- Dave Herman’s cheat sheet as a gist on Gitblub.
- There are two cheat sheets on EmacsWiki: here is the first one and here is the second one.
- Kablamo’s Emacs Cheat Sheet.
- Xah Lee has a page here with some common Emacs key chords.
- My page on Emacs Key Combinations, borrowing heavily from Bernhard G. Bodmann at the University of Houston. I have re-written mine in Org mode and exported to HTML.
- A post on this site quoting a comment on Hacker News about the Emacs commands you need to learn to use Emacs. Here is a post from 2023 about common Emacs commands you can use to get by.
Emacs groups:
- Emacs Asia-Pacific (APAC).
- EmacsATX, the Austin Emacs Meetup Group. There is also a subreddit for the group. The best Emacs group ever.
- Emacs Berlin.
- There is an Emacs group in New York City, although as of 2024-06-11, they have not had a meeting since 2021-12-06. Maybe they are just on a break.
- Emacs SF, the San Francisco Emacs group.
- There is a meetup about Org Mode: Info here.
Emacs Videos and/or channels (I have not looked at too many of these, and this list is not checked on a regular basis):
- Playlists from Tony Aldon – here is his website.
- Playlists from Matheus Augusto da Silva – here is his github profile.
- Bit-Mage has a few videos about Emacs, including one on using Emacs to develop Golang.
- A playlist from Blackberry Boy.
- Starting in 2024, Sacha Chua (of Emacs News and EmacsConf) started doing live streams on her YouTube channel.
- DistroTube’s Church of Emacs playlist.
- The Discovering Emacs podcast on YouTube.
- EmacsConf channel.
- A channel called Emacs Elements.
Note: As of 2024-07-13, it has come to my attention this channel is not longer available. If there are any updates, I will alter this entry. A lot of people seemed to like this channel.
As of 2025-04-25, it looks like it is back. - Videos from Emacs NYC: at their website and their YouTube channel.
- Videos at Emacs Rocks.
- EmacsSF has a channel. There are some gaps, and I do not know if they plan on continuing recording going forward.
- Gavin Freeborn’s Emacs playlist. He started out as a Vim user. On 2021-07-04 he made a video about transitioning to Emacs. As of 2024-04-26, he still seems to be running Emacs. He also a playlist about Common Lisp.
- goparism has a channel with some Emacs playlists and content.
- iLemming has a channel called Emacs Propaganda with videos demoing different things he does in Emacs, as well as interviews. He also posts on Hacker News and Reddit.
- Some guy named Jake B has a YouTube channel with a few Emacs playlists. It looks like his last video was uploaded on 2023-12-20, his first in about two years.
- Rainer Koenig’s playlist on Youtube about OrgMode.
- User lxsameer has a playlist called Emacs From Scratch.
- Chris Maiorana’s channel. He has an Emacs playlist, but not all of his Org/Emacs videos are on it.
- Positron’s Emacs Channel –
- Protesilaos Stavrou’s Emacs playlist. His main channel is here.
- Peter Prevos has a playlist about the Emacs Writing Studio, an Emacs config for authors. The Gitblub repo is here.
- Playlists from System Crafters. Some of his videos are under the “Videos” tab, and some are under the “Live” tab. Here is his website.
- Playlist from Skybert Hacks.
- Xah Lee’s channel. He seems to have shifted from videos to streams. He also talks about other topics. He also has a website with some code samples. I have used a couple of his functions in my Emacs config.
- Xenodium has a list called Bending Emacs.
- Using Emacs by Mike Zamansky.
Emacs Tutorials:
- The official Emacs manual.
- There is a good page about Emacs on Clojure For The Brave and True. I think this is where I first encountered smex (Gitblub page, Emacswiki page), which has profoundly changed my Emacs experience.
A few Emacs start kits/configs:
- Flying Machine’s Emacs config – This is from the author of Clojure For The Brave and True. It is mainly centered on Clojure development, but it also works as a general config. He includes a quick Emacs tutorial in his book. My Emacs config is based heavily on his. My first commit was on 2021-03-13, but I think I have been using it since mid-2020.
- Prelude – From its documentation: “Prelude is an Emacs distribution that aims to enhance the default Emacs experience.” Gitblub link here. If I were not using my own, this is the one I would go with.
- Doom Emacs – A popular one with its own subreddit.
- Spacemacs – Another popular one that tries to combine Emacs and Vim; also has its own subreddit.
At some point I will make a list of all the starter kits and configs on the web. There are a lot of them.
The EmacsWiki recommends newbies start at the EmacsNewbie page.
Here is a page from the EmacsWiki on installing packages. You can also find the command for the list-packages buffer on this page.
There are some galleries of Emacs themes: One by someone named Pawel Bx, and a site called “Emacs Themes.”
There are a few other uses of the term “Emacs”:
- Emacs CAD, an architecture firm in Nairobi, Kenya.
- San Bernardino County in California has an HR web portal called EMACS.
- EMACS Electromagnetic Control and Survey. From the website: “an aeronautical information management (AIM) system that makes use of advanced simulation techniques to carry out airport and en-route electromagnetic environment analysis.” There is another page about it here. I think for this one, “EMACS” is a not-quite-acronym for “Electromagnetic Control and Survey”.
- Chartwell is a consulting firm focusing on the utility industry. They put on a conference every year called EMACS. Per the FAQ, EMACS is an acronym for “Energy Marketing and Customer Service”. (Or is it an Emacs-ronym?)
- If you google “EMACS” for other uses, you might come across “EMAC Stockton“: Empowering Marginalized Asian Communities, an organization in Stockton, California. Their main website is here. Their URL does have “emacs” in it.
A cheat sheet on ParEdit. Here is another one on EmacsWiki. A page with notes on ParEdit. Another page with notes. To enclose an s-expression in parentheses, use M-x paredit-wrap-round. To eliminate parentheses but keep what is inside, use M-x paredit-splice-sexp just inside the parenthesis you want to eliminate, to the right of the first element. According to the cheat sheet, you can go from:
(foo (bar| baz) quux)
To:
(foo bar| baz quux)
To toggle on/off line numbers: M-x linum-mode.
Based on this answer on Stack Overflow, to comment out an s-expression while using ParEdit, go to the beginning and hit M-x mark-sexp, then M-x comment-dwim. I know everyone loves shortcuts, but now I am using a bunch of modes I got from Clojure For the Brave And True that I have decided to go with functions.
One mode I like is smex mode (see this page on the Emacs wiki). This will do auto-complete when you type in function names. Just hit M-x, and it will display the last functions you used. To get what command a key-binding is bound to, use: M-x describe-key and put in the key-binding, or M-x describe-bindings to get all bindings (see this answer on Stack Overflow).
To see your mode: M-x describe-mode RET (C-h m) t
Posts on this site about Emacs:
- I have a page on Emacs buffers here.
- Someone left a comment on Hacker News with a short Emacs survival guide that I quoted here.
- A few tricks I learned while using Emacs to edit Go (although the commands are not Go-specific).
- A post on starting Org Mode.
That is all for now.
This post was created in Emacs with Org Mode and Love. You’re welcome. And stop looking at your stupid phone all the time.
Image of Saint Luke from Poussay Gospels, a 10th-century manuscript now housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, image from Biblissima Portal, assumed allowed under Public Domain. Luke’s symbol was an ox; it kind of looks like St Ignucius giving him Emacs.