Question

17

Emacs-like keybindings system-wide?

rated 0 times [ 17] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 18231 / 3 Years ago, wed, november 10, 2021, 8:27:20

Is there a way to set Emacs-like keyboard shortcuts (at least the subset mentioned below) for the whole OS? This is possible in some apps such as the terminal, Emacs (go figure :) and additionally through special plugins in some other apps (Eclipse), but I got so used to C-f-ing through text and never having to jump to arrows that I'd like to be able to do this system-wide so that I can do it whenever I'm typing - e.g. searching for songs in Rhythmbox, typing stuff into the dash or the HUD, writing mails in Thunderbird or Gmail... The combos I'm most interested in are:

C-f - forward

C-b - backwards

C-a - home

C-e - end

C-d - delete

C-k - delete line

(note for non-emacs users - C means Ctrl)

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uccase

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1 Year ago

answered 3 Years ago panshow · Accepted Answer

I managed to solve the problem by using AutoKey, as recommended in this answer. Some of my phrases are:

content                     |   hotkey             |   description

---------------------------------------------------------------

<ctrl>+f                    |   <ctrl>+<alt>+f     | replace the find operation

<home>                      |   <ctrl>+a           | begining of line

<end>                       |   <ctrl>+e           | end of line

<left>                      |   <ctrl>+b           | back one letter

<right>                     |   <ctrl>+f           | forward one letter

<delete>                    |   <ctrl>+d           | delete one letter

<home><shift>+<end><delete> |   <ctrl>+k           | kill line

(yeah, the kill line combo was nasty to find :)

You could go on replacing stuff, but I don't want the mental remap to grow to large (e.g. ctrl+n doesn't open a new window, but goes to next line). All in all AutoKey is a cool app!

Anyway, now I've got the emacs ergonomy of never having to leave the "letter keys" throughout Ubuntu - in every text box I am editing. Yeiii!

Update: as I got deeper into playing with AutoKey to fine-tune everything, I made quite some changes. You can see my complete AutoKey Ubuntu-Emacs configuration (and install it) in my dotfiles git repo.