syl20bnr/spacemacs

A community-driven Emacs distribution - The best editor is neither Emacs nor Vim, it's Emacs *and* Vim!

Source code at GitHub http://spacemacs.org

{
  "createdAt": "2012-12-17T21:34:03Z",
  "defaultBranch": "develop",
  "description": "A community-driven Emacs distribution - The best editor is neither Emacs nor Vim,  it's Emacs *and* Vim!",
  "fullName": "syl20bnr/spacemacs",
  "homepage": "http://spacemacs.org",
  "language": "Emacs Lisp",
  "name": "spacemacs",
  "pushedAt": "2025-11-23T20:17:37Z",
  "stargazersCount": 24690,
  "topics": [
    "community-driven",
    "configuration",
    "emacs",
    "spacemacs",
    "vim"
  ],
  "updatedAt": "2025-11-25T19:38:17Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs"
}

Spacemacs

Quick Start

If you don’t have an existing Emacs setup and want to run Spacemacs as your configuration, and if you have all [prerequisites]!(#prerequisites) installed, you can install Spacemacs with one line:

shell:

git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs $HOME/.emacs.d

Windows PowerShell:

git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs $HOME/.emacs.d

If HOME is not set in environment or in registry:

git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs $env:APPDATA/.emacs.d

If you do have an existing Emacs configuration, look at the [full installation instructions]!(#install) for other options.

Introduction

Spacemacs is a new way of experiencing Emacs — it’s a sophisticated and polished set-up, focused on ergonomics, mnemonics and consistency.

Just clone and launch it, then press the space bar to explore the interactive list of carefully-chosen key bindings. You can also press the home buffer’s [?] button for some great first key bindings to try.

Spacemacs can be used naturally by both Emacs and Vim users — you can even mix the two editing styles. Being able to quickly switch between input styles, makes Spacemacs a great tool for pair-programming.

Spacemacs is currently in beta, and any contributions are very welcome.

![spacemacs_python]!(doc/img/spacemacs-python.png)

Features

Great documentation: access the Spacemacs documentation with SPC h SPC.
Beautiful GUI: you’ll love the distraction free UI and its functional mode-line.
Excellent ergonomics: all the key bindings are accessible by pressing the SPC or Alt-m.
Mnemonic key bindings: commands have mnemonic prefixes like SPC b for all the buffer commands or SPC p for the project commands.
Batteries included: discover hundreds of ready-to-use packages nicely organized in configuration layers following a set of [conventions ][CONVENTIONS.org].

Documentation

Comprehensive documentation is available for each layer by pressing SPC h SPC.

You can also check the [general documentation][DOCUMENTATION.org], [quick start guide][QUICK_START.org] and the [FAQ][FAQ.org].

Getting Help

If you need help, ask your questions in the [Gitter Chat][] and a member of the community will help you out.

If you prefer IRC, connect to the [Gitter Chat IRC server][] and join the #syl20bnr/spacemacs channel.

Last but not least there are a lot of high class tutorials available on YouTube:

Jack of Some’s [Spacemacs tutorial videos][jack-of-some].
GDQuest’s [Game Design oriented tutorials ][gdquest] to Spacemacs.
Practicalli’s [Clojure tutorials based on Spacemacs][practicalli].
Eivind Fonn’s classic [Spacemacs ABC][eivind-fonn].

Prerequisites

A package manager if the OS doesn’t have one already.
Spacemacs is an extension of a popular text editor called [Emacs][GNU Emacs]. So you’ll need Emacs installed first.

Spacemacs requires Emacs 28.2 or above. The development version of Emacs is not officially supported, but it should nevertheless be expected to work.
[git][Git] is required to download and update Spacemacs.
Tar, in particular [GNU Tar][], is required to install and update Emacs packages used by Spacemacs.
(Optional) The default font used by Spacemacs is [Source Code Pro][]. You may customize your own font settings and choose another font. If you want to use this default font, it must be installed.

Spacemacs also uses fallback fonts to ensure certain Unicode symbols it uses symbols appear correctly. The fonts used are determined by the OS:
- Linux: [Nanum Gothic][]
- macOS: [Arial Unicode MS][]
- Windows: [MS Gothic][] and [Lucida Sans Unicode][]
If the mode-line doesn’t look similar to the [picture at the top of this page]!(#introduction), make sure you have the correct fallback font installed.
(Optional) Various commands in Spacemacs needs one of the following line searching program:
- [ripgrep (rg)][ripgrep]
- [The silver searcher (ag)][ag]
- [ack][]
- [GNU Grep][] or [BSD Grep][]
Grep is very slow but it’s widely available on most systems and is used as an fallback option.

We strongly recommend [ripgrep][] over other line searching programs, for its blazing fast speed. The following subsections helps you to install it.

Linux

Most Linux distribution ships a package manager already and if this is the case you are all set for this step.

If it doesn’t, you may need to build the softwares mentioned below from their sources.
In most distributions, Emacs is installed via an emacs package from the package manager.

N.B. DO not install [XEmacs][] because it’s not supported by Spacemacs. XEmacs is an old fork of Emacs with various [subtle differences][Emacs And XEmacs].

N.B. Some Linux distributions support only Emacs versions older than 28.2. In this case you should [build it from source][Build Emacs from Source] instead.
Very likely Git is already installed on your system. Otherwise, you should be able to install git from your system’s package manager.
Very likely Tar is already installed on your system. Otherwise, you should be able to install tar from your system’s package manager.
(Optional) If Nerd Fonts and Nanum Gothic are available from your distribution’s package manager, you should install it there.

Otherwise, the generic way to install it is:
1. Download the latest pre-built TTF font from https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro/releases/latest and https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Nanum+Gothic.
2. Extract the archive and move the font files to ~/.fonts.
3. Refresh font cache with:
Terminal window
```
fc-cache -fv
```
(Optional) If your distribution is listed [here][ripgrep-installation], follow the instructions. Otherwise, you can download its pre-built binary or build it from source.

macOS

The most popular package manager on macOS is [Homebrew][], to install it:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Several options exist for installing Emacs on macOS:
1. [Emacs Plus][] features [additional functionalities][Emacs Plus features] over base Emacs.
  Terminal window
```
brew tap d12frosted/emacs-plus

# install latest stable release, with Spacemacs icon and native compilation
brew install emacs-plus --with-spacemacs-icon --with-native-comp
```
  You will require the latest version of Xcode Command Line tools, which can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Portal or by running the following command:
  Terminal window
```
softwareupdate --all --install --force
```
2. [Emacs Mac Port][] adds native GUI support to Emacs 28. And the full list of features is available [here][Emacs Mac Port features].
  Terminal window
```
brew tap railwaycat/emacsmacport
brew install emacs-mac
```
3. [Emacs for Mac OS X][] is the binary build of GNU Emacs, without any extra feature.
  Terminal window
```
brew install --cask emacs
```
To install git:
Terminal window
```
brew install git
```
macOS ships with [BSD Tar][], but there are reports of weird issues so we require [GNU Tar][] instead.
Terminal window
```
brew install gnu-tar
```
(Optional) To install Source Code Pro Font:
Terminal window
```
brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts
brew install --cask font-source-code-pro
```
Arial Unicode MS is shipped with macOS v10.5 and later so you don’t need to install it manually.
(Optional) You can install ripgrep via Homebrew:
Terminal window
```
brew install ripgrep
```

Windows

We recommend using wsl2 with wslg support especially with a pgtk build of emacs and wayland. For the installation please refer to the linux installation section. When running emacs within your wsl2 environment emacs will be handled like any other windows application.

If this is not possible you can fallback to a native windows installation, however note that this will create a lot of subtle bugs especially with tls which we will most likely not be able to help with.

If you need to follow that path we recommend to at least use a package manager like [Scoop][] to install the needed packages.

You can install [Scoop][] via PowerShell:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser # Optional: Needed to run a remote script the first time
irm get.scoop.sh | iex

Emacs can be installed in PowerShell:
Terminal window
```
scoop bucket add extras
scoop install emacs
```
To install git in PowerShell:
Terminal window
```
scoop bucket add main
scoop install git
```
Windows 10 build 17063 and later ships with [BSD Tar][], but it’s required to install [GNU Tar][] instead to avoid possible issues. Alternatively, if you are running an earlier version of Windows, Tar isn’t installed. In either case, you can install GNU Tar via:
Terminal window
```
scoop bucket add main
scoop install tar
```
To install Source Code Pro Font in PowerShell:
Terminal window
```
scoop bucket add KnotUntied_scoop-fonts https://github.com/KnotUntied/scoop-fonts
scoop install sourcecodepro
```
MS Gothic and Lucida Sans Unicode are shipped with Windows 2003 and later so you don’t need to install it manually.
(Optional) You can install ripgrep in PowerShell:
Terminal window
```
scoop bucket add main
scoop install ripgrep
```

Install

Default Install

The default installation downloads Spacemacs to the .emacs.d directory in your HOME directory.

But in the case of Windows, HOME is not set out-of-box. We recommend you to set it as an environment variable, with the same value as environment variable HOMEPATH, which usually looks like C:\Users\<username>.

Since Spacemacs will now be downloaded at $HOME/.emacs.d, if it already exists it’ll be overridden.

Also, if you have either $HOME/.emacs.el or $HOME/.emacs, they will appear before Spacemacs in Emacs’s initialization steps. Thus they must be renamed in order for Spacemacs to load correctly.

To backup/rename the aforementioned files/directory, in shell:

[ -d $HOME/.emacs.d ] && mv $HOME/.emacs.d $HOME/.emacs.d.bak
[ -f $HOME/.emacs.el ] && mv $HOME/.emacs.el .emacs.el.bak
[ -f $HOME/.emacs ] && mv $HOME/.emacs $HOME/.emacs.bak

or in PowerShell:

if( Test-Path -Path $HOME/.emacs.d )
{
    Rename-Item $HOME/.emacs.d $HOME/.emacs.d.bak
}
if( Test-Path -Path $HOME/.emacs.el )
{
    Rename-Item $HOME/.emacs.el $HOME/.emacs.el.bak
}
if( Test-Path -Path $HOME/.emacs )
{
    Rename-Item $HOME/.emacs $HOME/.emacs.bak
}

Now clone this repository with Git. The following work for both shell and PowerShell:
Terminal window
```
git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs $HOME/.emacs.d
```
In case you have a limited internet connection or limited speed:
Terminal window
```
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs ~/.emacs.d
```
Now you can launch Emacs and Spacemacs will be loaded.

Alternative Install Location

To install Spacemacs in a different location, we first need to introduce how Spacemacs is loaded:

When Emacs is started, it looks for the init file [in a deterministic way][Emacs: Find Init]. The [default installation]!(#default-install) exploits it by occupying $HOME/.emacs.d/init.el and let Emacs use it as its init file.

In other word, in default installation, Emacs find and load $HOME/.emacs.d/init.el, which is then responsible to load other files in $HOME/.emacs.d.

If you want to install Spacemacs to a different location, you need to make sure it’s loaded by Emacs in one of its [init file][Emacs: Find Init].

For example, if you’ve cloned Spacemacs to $HOME/Spacemacs, and if you use $HOME/.emacs.el as Emacs init file, then the following lines in $HOME/.emacs.el:

;; load Spacemacs's initialization file, "~" is equivalent to "$HOME"
(load-file "~/Spacemacs/init.el")

First Launch and Configuration

After cloning Spacemacs, the first time when you launch Emacs, Spacemacs will automatically install the essential packages it requires. This step is the bootstrap.
Once the bootstrap packages are installed, Spacemacs checks whether you have an customization file $HOME/.spacemacs, known as dotspacemacs:
- If it already exists, Spacemacs loads it as the configuration.
- Otherwise, you need to answer a few questions and Spacemacs will generate the dotspacemacs file for you.
If you are new to Emacs and/or Spacemacs, it’s fine to just accept the default choices. They can be changed in the dotspacemacs file later.
Spacemacs will download and install remaining packages it will require, according to your dotspacemacs. When the all the packages have been installed, restart Emacs to complete the installation.
dotspacemacs is the configuration file for Spacemacs, it’s self explanatory and is written in Emacs Lisp. Read [general documentation][DOCUMENTATION.org] and [quick start guide][QUICK_START.org] for more information.
In case you want to store your dotspacemacs at another location, say under $HOME/.spacemacs.d:
- First set the environment variable SPACEMACSDIR to $HOME/.spacemacs.d.
- Move $HOME/.spacemacs to $HOME/.spacemacs.d/init.el.
In other word, set SPACEMACSDIR to the parent directory of your dotspacemacs, and move dotspacemacs to the said directory.

Spacemacs logo

For Linux users, create spacemacs.desktop in ~/.local/share/applications/ using [this .desktop file][spacemacs-desktop] as a reference. Change the Name parameter to Name=Spacemacs and the Icon parameter to Icon=/PATH/TO/EMACSD/core/banners/img/spacemacs.png where PATH/TO/EMACSD is the path to your .emacs.d directory, by default ~/.emacs.d.

For macOS users, you need to [download the .icns version of the logo][icon-repository] and simply [change the logo on the Dock][icon-mac-instructions].

Notes

Depending on the installed version of GnuTLS, securely installing Emacs packages may fail. If this happens to you please update your OS and Emacs. If you are behind a company proxy please trust the company firewall cert. We do not longer support disabling https due to security reasons.
(Windows) If the following error occurs after starting Emacs:
```
The directory ~/.emacs.d/server is unsafe
```
Fix it by changing the owner of the directory ~/.emacs.d/server:
- From Properties select the Tab “Security”,
- Select the button “Advanced”,
- Select the Tab “Owner”
- Change the owner to your account name
Source: [Stack Overflow][so-server-unsafe]
(Windows) The period (dot) before a file or folder name means that it’s a hidden file or folder. To show hidden files and folders:
- Press the Windows key
- Type File explorer options
- Select the View tab at the top
- Check Show hidden files, folders and drives
- Click OK

Update

Spacemacs relies solely on a rolling update scheme based on the latest changes available. To update Spacemacs, simply pull the latest changes from the develop branch:

Close Emacs and update the git repository:
Terminal window
```
git pull --rebase
```
Restart Emacs to complete the upgrade.

After updating Spacemacs, you should also check if any updates are available for your packages. On the Spacemacs Home Buffer SPC b h, click (press RET) on the [Update Packages] button, or use the convenient keybinding SPC f e U

Upgrading from the deprecated `master` branch

If you are still on the old master branch (i.e., if git branch --show-current shows master instead of develop), you need to upgrade to develop first.

Quotes

[Quote][quote01] by ashnur:

«I feel that spacemacs is an aircraft carrier and I am playing table tennis
on the deck as a freerider.»

[Quote][quote02] by deuill:

«I LOVE SPACEMACS AND MAGIT

 That is all»

Contributions

Spacemacs is a community-driven project, it needs you to keep it up to date and to propose great and useful configurations for all the things!

Before contributing, be sure to consult the [contribution guidelines][CONTRIBUTING.org] and [conventions][CONVENTIONS.org].

Communities

[Gitter Chat][]
[Stack Exchange][]
[Reddit][]

Spacemacs Everywhere

Once you’ve learned the Spacemacs key bindings, you can use them in other IDEs/tools, thanks to the following projects:

Intellimacs - Spacemacs’ like key bindings for IntelliJ platform
Spaceclipse - Spacemacs’ like key bindings for Eclipse
SpaceVim - A community-driven modular vim distribution
VSpaceCode - Spacemacs’ like key bindings for Visual Studio Code

License

The license is GPLv3 for all parts specific to Spacemacs, this includes:

the initialization and core files
all the layer files
the documentation

For the packages shipped in this repository, you can refer to the files header.

[Spacemacs logo][] by [Nasser Alshammari][] released under a [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.][creativecommons-4]

Supporting Spacemacs

The best way to support Spacemacs is to contribute to it either by reporting bugs, helping the community on the [Gitter Chat][] or sending pull requests.

You can show your love for the project by getting cool Spacemacs t-shirts, mugs and more in the [Spacemacs Shop][].

If you want to show your support financially, then you can contribute to [Bountysource][], or buy a drink for the maintainer by clicking on the [Paypal badge]!(#top).

If you used Spacemacs in a project, and you want to show that fact, you can use the Spacemacs badge:

For Markdown:

[![Built with Spacemacs](https://cdn.rawgit.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/442d025779da2f62fc86c2082703697714db6514/assets/spacemacs-badge.svg)](https://spacemacs.org)

For HTML:

<a href="https://spacemacs.org"><img alt="Built with Spacemacs" src="https://cdn.rawgit.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/442d025779da2f62fc86c2082703697714db6514/assets/spacemacs-badge.svg" /></a>

For Org-mode:

[[https://spacemacs.org][file:https://cdn.rawgit.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/442d025779da2f62fc86c2082703697714db6514/assets/spacemacs-badge.svg]]

Thank you!

[CONTRIBUTING.org] !: CONTRIBUTING.org [CONVENTIONS.org] !: doc/CONVENTIONS.org [DOCUMENTATION.org] !: doc/DOCUMENTATION.org [FAQ.org] !: doc/FAQ.org [QUICK_START.org] !: doc/QUICK_START.org

[Gitter Chat] !: https://gitter.im/syl20bnr/spacemacs [Gitter Chat IRC server] !: https://irc.gitter.im/ [Stack Exchange] !: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/spacemacs [Reddit] !: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacemacs [jack-of-some] !: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-BHx7VNX5s&list=PLd_Oyt6lAQ8Rxb0HUnGbRrn6R4Cdt2yoI [gdquest] !: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCNOB5jjtmc&list=PLhqJJNjsQ7KFkMVBunWWzFD8SlH714qm4 [practicalli] !: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMJ58Gcc1RI&list=PLpr9V-R8ZxiCHMl2_dn1Fovcd34Oz45su [eivind-fonn] !: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFV5EqpZ6_s&list=PLrJ2YN5y27KLhd3yNs2dR8_inqtEiEweE

[GNU Emacs] !: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ [XEmacs] !: https://www.xemacs.org [Emacs And XEmacs] !: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsAndXEmacs [Build Emacs from Source] !: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/efaq/Installing-Emacs.html [Emacs: Find Init] !: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Find-Init.html [Emacs Plus] !: https://github.com/d12frosted/homebrew-emacs-plus [Emacs Plus features] !: https://github.com/d12frosted/homebrew-emacs-plus#features-explained [Emacs Mac Port] !: https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport [Emacs Mac Port features] !: https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/src/master/README-mac [Emacs for Mac OS X] !: https://emacsformacosx.com/ [Git] !: https://git-scm.com/downloads [GNU Tar] !: https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/ [BSD Tar] !: https://man.openbsd.org/tar [Source Code Pro] !: https://adobe-fonts.github.io/source-code-pro/ [Nanum Gothic] !: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Nanum+Gothic [Arial Unicode MS] !: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/arial-unicode-ms [MS Gothic] !: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/ms-gothic [Lucida Sans Unicode] !: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/lucida-sans-unicode [ripgrep] !: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep [ripgrep-installation] !: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep#installation= [ag] !: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher [ack] !: https://github.com/beyondgrep/ack3 [GNU Grep] !: https://www.gnu.org/software/grep/ [BSD Grep] !: https://man.openbsd.org/grep [Homebrew] !: https://brew.sh [Scoop] !: https://scoop.sh