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Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

kristofferbalintona.me

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Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#41

Post by kreetx »

sroerick wrote: post #20
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be embarrassed by a setup that works. In the spirit of hopefully constrictive feedback: A/B: Any reason not to do emacs or neovim everywhere? You can copy your dotfiles to the server if needed? C: I wouldn't/don't use Dropbox either. If bash+scp works then great, but have you considered keeping your files in git? Still easy to sync over ssh from one machine to another, but natively handles things like sync conf…

I just haven't found Emacs to be particularly productive over SSH. IMO it works best on a local machine, there's just too much in the GUI which isn't as workable over terminal. Font rendering, images, clickable text links all take a hit. None are really deal breakers, but Emacs TUI just kind of feels like an afterthought. X11 over SSH doesn't feel responsive to me. Its almost more of an aesthetic choice really, its j…

I've used git-annex and I'll tell you, it's overcomplicated. Git LFS is probably better.

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#42

Post by xenodium »

IceDane wrote: post #35
rrix2 wrote: post #17

Specifically for org, and specifically for org-roam, it's pretty good, but not good enough. It's not as good as desktop emacs, and it's also somehow not as good as a 1st class android app. the fdroid build of emacs doesn't really work very well with my org-roam, so i use a termux build,,, well nix-on-droid+emacs-overlay... and it's fine, for capture and recall. but i'm not authoring a lot of text with it. a custom ex…

> don't listen to ~any emacs user's opinion I sort of came here to say the same thing. The intersection between (the set of people who care about good UX) and (the set of people who would try to use emacs on android) is the empty set. Emacs users' self-flagellation is pretty legendary, and I say this as an emacs user (though I've mostly given up on how janky and slow it is compared to modern editors and only use it f…

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...

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#44

Post by Karrot_Kream »

IceDane wrote: post #35
rrix2 wrote: post #17

Specifically for org, and specifically for org-roam, it's pretty good, but not good enough. It's not as good as desktop emacs, and it's also somehow not as good as a 1st class android app. the fdroid build of emacs doesn't really work very well with my org-roam, so i use a termux build,,, well nix-on-droid+emacs-overlay... and it's fine, for capture and recall. but i'm not authoring a lot of text with it. a custom ex…

> don't listen to ~any emacs user's opinion I sort of came here to say the same thing. The intersection between (the set of people who care about good UX) and (the set of people who would try to use emacs on android) is the empty set. Emacs users' self-flagellation is pretty legendary, and I say this as an emacs user (though I've mostly given up on how janky and slow it is compared to modern editors and only use it f…

I agree with you on UX but disagree with everything else. If you use native elisp compilation, I find its speed to rival an average editor. Completions can be slow in lsp-mode but still faster than VSCode (and emacs itself ships with eglot, a less full featured alternative to lsp-mode, but may be faster. I haven't used it enough to judge.) This is due to shelling out to LSPs and the fact that not all LSPs are particularly well built.

If you find your emacs to feel jank I highly recommend declaring "emacs bankruptcy" and starting anew with a fresh config. Defaults emacs ships with today are really good.

That said I haven't used emacs on Android yet so I don't know how well, if it all, it works. I also think the UX of emacs tends to bend toward the user's own preferences rather than good UX, and the default UX of emacs is a bit bad.

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#45

Post by Karrot_Kream »

sroerick wrote: post #13

I'm a little embarrassed by my current workflow, which is: A. Emacs and org mode on my laptop B. Neovim to do development via SSH on my dedicated Hetzner box, because my laptop is too potato for dev C. A bash script to push up any random notes I have up to the server I have used sshfs, syncthing and unison in the past, but never quite got the workflow for either to click. After about 13 years of trying I still am not…

You're looking for tramp-mode. I used tramp-mode for years when working in a lab in grad school where is write code in emacs, have it save via SSH, then build and run the code on the remote. It allows you to use emacs just to author text and to use the remote for everything else.

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#46

Post by Karrot_Kream »

mbork_pl wrote: post #22
s20n wrote: post #12

I've been using Emacs 30 on my android tablet for a few months now with a bluetooth keyboard. Needless to say, you can't really leverage eglot so it's basically a no-go for any meaningful software development. I've been using it for org-mode and it is fantastic for that.

Not to criticize you - I also use eglot and it's great - but let me mention that people have been doing pretty meaningful software development for several decades now, and LSPs are, I don't know, 5 years old? There's a saying in my language, "the appetite grows while you eat"...

I think it's a fair complaint. You're on a setup with bad ergonomics as it is (tablet + Bluetooth keyboard.) Dealing with that and no LSP is rough. I'd be happy writing code on a desktop without an LSP, though I'd be happiest with both.

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#47

Post by Hetzner_OL »

sroerick wrote: post #13

I'm a little embarrassed by my current workflow, which is: A. Emacs and org mode on my laptop B. Neovim to do development via SSH on my dedicated Hetzner box, because my laptop is too potato for dev C. A bash script to push up any random notes I have up to the server I have used sshfs, syncthing and unison in the past, but never quite got the workflow for either to click. After about 13 years of trying I still am not…

Hi OP, just chiming in here because you mentioned us at Hetzner and I saw your post. I also wasn't sure if the comment from nurettin below was meant to be "NextCloud" instead of "owncloud"...? NextCloud and Dropbox have some very similar use cases. We have a line of NextCloud-based products (Storage Shares). Maybe it would be worth trying out. --Katie

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#48

Post by xz18r »

sharperguy wrote: post #38
zingar wrote: post #31

Caveat: all this is on iOS: The only reason I want emacs on my phone is the one thing I don’t have: I want my org notes to be on both desktop and mobile. But syncing files across both has been dreadful, even in paid apps: duplicates everywhere and I constantly have to rechoose the files in a file finder UI. So my reminders are not just ever present for the time when they’re relevant, they’re just “not there” unless I…

I don't use emacs or org mode, so I'm probably way off the mark, but I imagine I'd use git if I were to do something like that?

I use git (with Working Copy) for sync for this exact use-case.

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#50

Post by deng »

The nice thing is that Emacs 30.1 now has much better support for touchscreen events. It will take some time for packages to make use of that, but at least it is now possible. For instance, you should now be able to increase/decrease text size by pinching.
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