The Most Minimal Config
Table of Contents
1 A face only a programmer could love
Emacs is ugly. There really is no excuse, in this day and age, for emacs to still but butt ugly. Fortunately for all of us, it is rather easy to fix.
First things first tho. Emacs can be configured by a script that is stored in one of a few locations.
| Version | Location |
| Pre 27 | "~/.emacs", "~/.emacs.d/init.el" |
| 27 | All of the above + "~/.config/emacs/init.el" |
Just pick one. For our purposes the slight difference that come with each of these choices won't make that big a difference.
1.1 Barring All Bars
This first step is pretty much ubiquitous among emacs configs. It really should be the default. I like to get as much of my editing buffer visible as possible, to that end I turn off the menu bar, the tool bar, and the scroll bar.
(menu-bar-mode -1) (tool-bar-mode -1) (scroll-bar-mode -1)
Just these few simple statements make emacs a million times more delightful. But we can do better.
1.2 Them Themes
A white background just wrecks my eyes. I have to take the sting out. I try and cut out most bright colors and I understand that blue light is the worst for your eyes.
I won't try and recomend a color scheme for you but I will show you how to change the default emacs theme.
(load-theme 'wombat)
Now you can replace wombat with any of the available themes included with emacs. To see that list, and maybe test them out, press M-x load-theme <TAB>.
Emacs completion will show a buffer listing all available themes.