Emacs Cheat Sheet for Beginners

Emacs Cheat Sheet for Beginners.org

Understanding Keybindings in Emacs

• Emacs uses special keys for shortcuts, often written in a notation like C-x C-f or M-f.

Control (C-) Key

• C- stands for **Control**.
• C-x means **press and hold Control (Ctrl) and then press =x=**.
• Example: C-x C-f means:
  1. Hold Ctrl
  2. Press x
  3. Then press f while still holding Ctrl

Meta (M-) Key

• M- stands for **Meta**, which was an old key on Lisp machines.
• Today, Meta is usually the =Alt= key (on most keyboards).
• Example: M-f means:
  1. Hold Alt
  2. Press f

Example Commands

• C-s → Start a search
• M-f → Move forward one word

Opening and Closing Emacs

• emacs → Start Emacs
• C-x C-c → Exit Emacs

Files

• C-x C-f → Open or create a file
• C-x C-s → Save the current file

Navigation

• C-f → Move forward one character
• C-b → Move backward one character
• C-n → Move to the next line
• C-p → Move to the previous line
• M-f → Move forward one word
• M-b → Move backward one word
• C-a → Move to the beginning of the line
• C-e → Move to the end of the line
• M-< → Move to the beginning of the file
• M-> → Move to the end of the file

Editing

• C-d → Delete forward
• M-d → Delete forward word
• C-k → Kill (cut) to end of line
• M-w → copy
• C-y → Yank (paste)
• M-y → Cycle through previous yanks
• C-/ or C-x u → Undo

Undo

to undo press C-/

Redo

• to Redo, simply do something unrelated like such as C-e or C-n what ever as long its not C-/ and press C-/ to redo
  • Simply the undo and redo is the same key if you want to undo press C-/ to redo do somthing like C-e or C-n and press C-/

Buffers (Open Files)

• C-x b → Switch buffer
• C-x C-b → List buffers
• C-x k → Kill (close) buffer

Windows (Split View)

• C-x 0 → Close current window
• C-x o → Switch to another window
• C-x 2 → Split window horizontally
• C-x 3 → Split window vertically
• C-x 1 → Close other windows

Search

• C-s → Forward search
• C-r → Reverse search

Help

• C-h t → Open tutorial
• C-h k → Describe a keybinding
• C-h f → Describe a function
• C-h v → Describe a variable

Opening and Closing Emacs

• emacs → Start Emacs
• C-x C-c → Exit Emacs

(menu-bar-mode -1)
(tool-bar-mode -1)
(scroll-bar-mode -1)

(global-display-line-numbers-mode 1)

(setq custom-file (locate-user-emacs-file "custom.el"))
(load custom-file t)

(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "fontname-size")) ;;ex Monospace-20 or JetBrainsMono Nerd Font-20
(setq inhibit-splash-screen t)