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#+TITLE: Using Emacsclient on Macos
#+DATE: 2020-06-18T17:10:15-04:00
#+DRAFT: false
#+DESCRIPTION:
#+TAGS[]: macos emacs
#+KEYWORDS[]:
#+SLUG:
#+SUMMARY:
Emacs is an amazing editor, but it can be a little slow to start
sometimes. That's why =emacsclient= lets you run Emacs as a daemon and
connect to it as a client, negating the startup time and letting you
jump directly into editing.
# more
The two primary ways of getting Emacs onto your Mac are by either
downloading it from [[https://emacsformacosx.com/][Emacs For MacOS X]] or by installing it through
[[https://brew.sh/][homebrew]] using =brew cask install emacs=. I prefer the homebrew method
as it automatically adds =emacs= and =emacsclient= to your =$PATH=.
Using it from the command line is a breeze. I have this alias in my
=.bashrc=
#+BEGIN_SRC shell
alias em="emacsclient -t -a ''"
#+END_SRC
This way I can type =em <filename>= to edit a file. =-t= tells
emacsclient to start in terminal mode, and =-a= tell it to start the
Emacs daemon process if it isn't already running.
Getting the GUI version to run without first opening the command line
is a little trickier. Homebrew provides an app for =emacs=, but no way
to start =emacsclient=. The way I've worked around that is by using
[[https://github.com/deseven/icanhazshortcut][iCanHazShortcut]], which lets you bind arbitrary shell commands to
keyboard shortcuts.
To add a new shortcut, open the app and click the =Shortcuts= tab at
the top. Then click the plus in the bottom right corner, click inside
the =Shortcut= field, press the desired shortcut keys, give it an
action name, and a command.
To launch =emacsclient=, I have a shortcut bound to
@@html:<kbd>⌃</kbd> + <kbd>⇧</kbd> + <kbd>⌘</kbd> + <kbd>E</kbd>@@
which runs
#+BEGIN_SRC shell
emacsclient -c -n -a ''
#+END_SRC
The =-c= flag tells =emacsclient= to open a GUI window instead of in
terminal mode. The =-n= flag tells the command to return once the
window is opened, instead of waiting for the client to close. Finally,
like before the =-a ''= flag tells =emacsclient= to start the Emacs
daemon if it isn't already running.
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