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EMACS

~1m skim, 136 words, updated Dec 17, 2025

Magic that your boss will never let you use with a client.

Contents

The Glorious Magic of EMACS¶

Using Emacs Remotely¶

It is trivial to use Emacs without a GUI - nearly all the features you love will still be present when using the system over SSH.

The display-graphic-p function returns non-nil if the display is graphical, and nil if you are in a terminal,

(when (display-graphic-p)
  (enable-fancy-gui))

MacOS: Set up iTerm2¶

The stock terminal doesn’t handle the meta key (and others) correctly, so install open up an iTerm2 window and change the following:

1. Profiles => Default => Keys
   • Check “Report Modifiers using CSI u”
   • Change “Left Option Key” and “Right Option Key” to “Esc+”
2. Advanced => SDA (or search ’emacs')
   • Change to ‘216’ (this refers to a specific xterm patch)