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xenodiumon Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

I’m an Emacs enthusiast and also build iOS apps powered by org markup.

The more I used my apps, the more I wanted their UX optimised for mobile. This often means completely rethinking the Emacs experience when bringing to mobile.

This is most obvious in my latest app [1]. Org markup fully fades as implementation details. Of all my apps, this is the one I personally use the most. Proudly, I also started getting non-Emacs users interested in org [2].

Anyway, that’s all to say that as an Emacs fan, I want the full Emacs experience on desktop, but when on iPhone, I want fully optimised mobile UX. No meta anything there ;)

[1] https://xenodium.com/journelly-like-tweeting-but-for-your-ey...

[2] https://ellanew.com/ptpl/157-2025-05-19-journelly-is-org-for...

xenodiumon Ask HN: Where to begin with "modern" Emacs?

I’d say if you feel comfortable with Doom, keep at it. Coming from vim, it may be a smoother transition. You can always reconsider at any time. Doom is Emacs just as vanilla is.

xenodiumon Ask HN: Where to begin with "modern" Emacs?

Ah yes. I find the ⌘ key placement a little more ergonomic/convenient, but at the end of the day, pick whatever works for ya.

Thinking back, I prolly didn't use those two commands often enough to internalize M-| or M-% bindings, so the system-level handling didn't bother me. While I do replace things all the time, I typically use multiple cursors (I do use bindings for that). If I need querying, I just type `M-x que RET` which gets picked up by a completion frameworks (in my case ivy).

Relatedly, I also use Hammerspoon on macOS and set some global key bindings using the ⌥ key.

xenodiumon Ask HN: Where to begin with "modern" Emacs?

Welcome to Emacs!

- I write about Emacs things fairly frequently: https://xenodium.com

- I started making Emacs videos recently: https://www.youtube.com/xenodium

- For aggregated Emacs blogs, check out https://planet.emacslife.com

- For aggregated Emacs videos, https://emacs.tv

- The Emacs subreddit can be handy too https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs

- If on the fediverse, follow the #emacs hashtag

- Sacha Chua's Emacs News are great https://sachachua.com/blog/category/emacs-news

With respect to "modern", maybe these two posts could be of interest:

- Visual tweaks: https://xenodium.com/my-emacs-eye-candy

- macOS tricks: https://xenodium.com/awesome-emacs-on-macos

Enjoy the ride!

xenodiumon Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)

> With agent shell it feels so much more integrated and natural.

That's great to hear.

> I wish that agent-shell-sidebar had some screenshots though so I could see what it actually does.

I nudged the package author for a screenshot. Having said that, you can see it in action here: https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell/pull/55

xenodiumon Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)

Thank you! I really appreciate the words and the purchase!

xenodiumon Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)

Hey, nice to see ya here! Sure, you know where to find me :)

xenodiumon Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)

It's got some of them already like showing and accepting diffs rendered natively. All edits are committed via Emacs itself and on to open buffers if applicable. TAB navigation. Accepting permission has had a fair amount of iteration to smoothen the experience. It's been quite a bit of work to get here. There are obviously more feature to come. Please file feature requests if you find anything missing and of course, sponsor the project if you truly want it to be sustainable and move forward.

xenodiumon Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)

> but I don't like the header added on the top of the buffer

Please file a feature request, so we can make the graphical header optional: https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell/issues

xenodiumon Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)

Hey I know where that’s from!

As an Emacs user, his video was very funny https://youtu.be/urcL86UpqZc?si=Jhqiy1yCXDGHoIoS

xenodiumon Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)

Thank you! This really makes my day.

Also glad to hear you’re a Journelly fan. Thank you for purchasing. Building niche apps sustainably is a real challenge.

xenodiumon Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)

Swing by the Emacs side ;) We got vim bindings too!

xenodiumon Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)

A unified native user experience built into your text editor. Not only for Claude Code but also any other agent that talks ACP like Gemini CLI, Codex, Goose, etc.

xenodiumon Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)

agent-shell: A single native Emacs experience to interact with different AI agents powered by ACP (Agent Client Protocol) https://agentclientprotocol.com

So far, agent-shell can interact with Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex, and Goose, but can technically work with any ACP-powered agent.

ps. agent-shell needs more sponsors to become sustainable https://github.com/sponsors/xenodium

xenodiumon Agent Shell 0.5 Improvements

Thank you Daniel!

xenodiumon Agent Shell 0.5 Improvements

https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell

A native Emacs shell mode to interact with multiple LLM agents powered by ACP (Agent Client Protocol) https://agentclientprotocol.com

xenodiumon Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

> Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse

https://LMNO.lol is my grain of sand.

I wasn't happy the state of blogging (tracking, bloat, ads, paywalls...), so I built https://LMNO.lol. It's offline first and you can browse blogs from anywhere (even terminal). Your blog is a single Markdown file. Drag and drop it to the browser and your entire blog is generated.

Custom domains are welcome. My blog is running off LMNO.lol that https://xenodium.com

xenodiumon GNU Midnight Commander

I didn’t use mc much back in the day, but I do use Emacs dired a ton these days. Specially for applying command line utilities to a bunch of files. https://xenodium.com/how-i-batch-apply-and-save-one-liners

xenodiumon GNU Midnight Commander

Dired is awesome. It’s replaced a bunch of my terminal usage https://xenodium.com/how-i-batch-apply-and-save-one-liners

xenodiumon De-Clouding: Music

I went through a similar exercise last year (back to purchasing/owning music) and couldn't be happier. Built my own offline player too.

https://xenodium.com/ready-player-mode

https://xenodium.com/a-tour-of-ready-player-mode

xenodiumon Emacs as your video-trimming tool

> I could see weighing it in my sponsorship decisions.

I build software. If I build useful things, there's a demand.

TIL where I live is now relevant to some.

xenodiumon Emacs as your video-trimming tool

> Author needs money from you but lives in London. Maybe he should move somewhere cheaper

Wow. Is this because I wrote the following on my blog?

"Find video-trimmer-mode useful? Want me to publish to MELPA? Enjoying this blog or my projects? I am an indie dev. Help make my work sustainable by sponsoring.

Need a blog? I can help with that. Maybe buy my macOS/iOS apps too ;)"

xenodiumon Emacs as your video-trimming tool

Hey, thanks for reporting. I had a couple of links that went haywire. Please lemme know if you run into other issues. First link to https://xenodium.com/seek-and-you-shall-find was broken. Should work fine now.

xenodiumon Emacs as your video-trimming tool

lol I did work in the smarwatch space for a good chunk of time. While I totally get the nail thing, this is as quick/lightweight as it gets after the command line, which is a lot more cumbersome for this use case.

xenodiumon Emacs as your video-trimming tool

> Screenflow is the lightest i know of but fails badly at some video formats and sometimes OoMs

I'm a big fan of ScreenFlow, but light it is not ;) If you just want to trim and assuming you are on macOS, QuickTime's "Edit > Trim..." does the job. It's what I used before doing the Emacs thingy.

xenodiumon I used to know how to write in Japanese

If you're a beginner (like me), I built a little space-invaders-like game to help me practice the kana https://xenodium.com/mochi-invaders-now-on-the-app-store It's free (no ads nor funny business).

xenodiumon This website is for humans

> I write the content on this website for people, not robots. I’m sharing my opinions and experiences so that you might identify with them and learn from them. I’m writing about things I care about because I like sharing and I like teaching.

Hits home for me. I tried hard to free my blog (https://xenodium.com) of any of the yucky things I try avoid in the modern web (tracking, paywalls, ads, bloat, redundant js, etc). You can even read from lynx if that's your cup of tea.

ps. If you'd like a blog like mine, I also offer it as a service https://LMNO.lol (custom domains welcome).

xenodiumon Software Rot

While Emacs itself is not entirely immune to software rot (external dependencies and all), it’s truly amazing how little to no rot is experienced by elisp software (packages). If you find an Emacs package written 15 years ago, the chances of successfully running out of the box are incredibly high.

xenodiumon Emacs: The macOS Bug

Native UI integrations are pretty nice. For example, native sharing/send-to was recently merged https://xenodium.com/emacs-send-to-aka-macos-sharing-merged-...

xenodiumon Org tutorials

I've written a handful iOS apps powered by org. Journelly is my latest https://xenodium.com/journelly-like-tweeting-but-for-your-ey...

I got quite a few users who either come from Markdown or simply don't care about the internal implementation. Here's a wonderful writeup by a user https://ellanew.com/ptpl/157-2025-05-19-journelly-is-org-for...

ps. Markdown is also coming to Journelly https://xenodium.com/markdown-is-coming-to-journelly

edit: My other org-based iOS apps

- Flat Habits (habits tracker): https://flathabits.com

- Plain Org (general purpose org viewer/editor): https://plainorg.com

- Scratch (a scratch buffer): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scratch/id1671420139