Emacs: decent defaults I shared with Sacha Chua (protesilaos.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by NanoooK@sh.itjust.works to c/emacs@lemmy.ml

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[-] Oinks 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Every blog post like this contains a bunch of new variables I've never heard of but always wanted. Like help-window-keep-selected or window-combination-resize.

Putting that aside though, am I the only one who likes the built-in completions buffer?

(use-package minibuffer
  :custom
  (completions-format 'one-column)
  (completions-sort 'historical)   ; Emacs 30
  (completions-max-height 20)
  (completion-styles '(basic partial-completion substring))
  (completion-auto-select t)
  (completion-ignore-case t))

I like that it doesn't move the modeline up for completion and that it feels like shell completion. It also works for completion at-point.

The variable completion-auto-select is load bearing for my workflow though, before I knew about it I very much thought I needed icomplete or vertico.

[-] tomenzgg@midwest.social 3 points 3 weeks ago

I tend to like it, too (though I can't tell if that's just because it's what I first used and now I just expect it to work that way, now…).

Do you know if there's a way to go backwards through available options, though? I forget what shift+tab does but its not the inverse of tab and having to cycle all the way through to come back around on a particularly large list of options sure is tedious.

I think that's just about my only complaint with the default.

[-] Oinks 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Shift-Tab just does the correct thing for me on Emacs 30.2. That might be a newer default though.

I think on an older version something like this should do it:

(keymap-set completion-list-mode-map "<backtab>" #'previous-completion)

This only works when the completion buffer is selected though (e.g. via completion-auto-select). I'm not really sure how to get useful backtab behavior in the minibuffer itself.

Edit -- These bindings might be worth trying as well if you don't like the auto selection:

(keymap-set minibuffer-local-completion-map "<tab>"     #'minibuffer-next-completion)
(keymap-set minibuffer-local-completion-map "<backtab>" #'minibuffer-previous-completion)

[-] tomenzgg@midwest.social 3 points 3 weeks ago

So it's possible I just never noticed the message noting minibuffer-next/previous-completion but those are pretty cool.

But I think I was more thinking of tabbing in the opposite direction for minibuffer-complete; the situation I'm most often finding myself with such an abundance of options is when I'm exploring available functions and just looking; I rarely want to go one-by-one in such a scenario.

…but what I just discovered is that functionality is already provided (I was confused when I saw that "backtab" was already assigned in minibuffer-local-completion-map); it just doesn't seem to be there when auto-completing in Eval: (which just responds with " is undefined"); which is how I'm most often looking at other available functions. That must be why I thought it never worked.

Welp, I appreciate the info., regardless; I definitely learned a bit more than I knew before. And it's good to know backtab will actually work in M-x, if I ever find I need it.

[-] sachac@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago

Maybe M-p?

[-] tomenzgg@midwest.social 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Not quite (though I hadn't realized, before this thread, that such an option existed); I was more thinking of tabbing in the opposite direction for minibuffer-complete.

I sort of lay out everything in the comment at https://midwest.social/comment/24082938 but the short of it is that I realized that minibuffer-complete does have functionality already built it: it just doesn't seem to work when trying to to autocompletion in Eval:. So I didn't realize that it'd work in circumstances like M-x.

Thanks so much for the suggestion, though! 'Appreciate the help.

[-] nsh@lemmy.nz 2 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks for sharing. In this age of slop, I tend to lean towards the built-in packages more and more nowadays.

What https://github.com/jamescherti/minimal-emacs.d has taught me is that vanilla Emacs is perfectly capable, especially with the built-in support for LSP and Treesitter, if you need them.

this post was submitted on 08 May 2026

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