GNU Emacs
An extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor — and more.
At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.
The features of GNU Emacs include
- Content-aware editing modes, including syntax coloring, for many file types.
- Complete built-in documentation, including a tutorial for new users.
- Full Unicode support for nearly all human scripts.
- Highly customizable, using Emacs Lisp code or a graphical interface.
- A wide range of functionality beyond text editing, including a project planner, mail and news reader, debugger interface, calendar, IRC client, and more.
- A packaging system for downloading and installing extensions.
Discover Emacs in video
- @emacsrocks ;; episode 15"Restclient"
- @emacsrocks ;; episode 14"Paredit"
- @emacsrocks ;; episode 13"multiple-cursors"
Watch more episodes on Emacsrocks.com.
Emacs 29.1
Released Jul 30, 2023
Emacs 29.1 has a wide variety of new features, including:
- Supports "pure GTK" (PGTK) build
- Uses XInput 2 on X for input events
- Uses tree-sitter parsers for several programming modes
- Includes LSP client called Eglot
- Includes the use-package package
- Can access SQLite databases using sqlite3 library
- Can display WebP images using libwebp library
- Faster editing of files with very long lines
- Better support for drag-and-drop on X
- Pixel-precise scrolling with touchpad support
- Enhanced support for editing and displaying Emoji
- Support for Unicode 15.0 and many new scripts
- Many enhancements of help and completion commands
- Numerous enhancements to Image Dired
- Double-buffering on MS-Windows
Emacs 28.2
Released Sep 12, 2022
Emacs 28.2 is a maintenance release.
Emacs 28.1
Released Apr 4, 2022
Emacs 28.1 has a wide variety of new features, including:
- Native compilation of Lisp files
- Text shaping with HarfBuzz and drawing with Cairo
- Support for loading Secure Computing filters
- Much improved display of Emoji and Emoji sequences
- New system for documenting groups of functions
- A minor mode for context menus
- Mode-specific commands
- Emacs shows matching parentheses by default
- Many improvements and extensions to project.el
See also dates of older releases.
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter, the Free Software Supporter
“Our mission is to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of Free Software users.”