Spacemacs is a configuration framework for

GNU Emacs GNU Emacs is a text editor and suite of free software tools. Its development began in 1984 by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU ...

. It can take advantage of all of GNU Emacs' features, including both graphical and

command-line A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user-friendly alternativ ...

user interfaces, and being executable under

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

and within a

Unix shell A Unix shell is a Command-line_interface#Command-line_interpreter, command-line interpreter or shell (computing), shell that provides a command line user interface for Unix-like operating systems. The shell is both an interactive command languag ...

terminal. It is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

(FOSS) released under the GPL-3.0-or-later license. Spacemacs consists mainly of

configuration file A configuration file, a.k.a. config file, is a computer file, file that stores computer data, data used to configure a software system such as an application software, application, a server (computing), server or an operating system. Some applic ...

s, pre-defined internal commands, and configurations for various plug-ins (called 'packages'). It features a novel mnemonic key binding design (e.g., commands for file manipulation often start with "f",) which attempts to improve

ergonomics Ergonomics, also known as human factors or human factors engineering (HFE), is the application of Psychology, psychological and Physiology, physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Primary goa ...

(and avoid emacs pinky), a system for adding or excluding pre-configured features called 'layers', and includes verbose

software documentation Software documentation is written text or illustration that accompanies computer software or is embedded in the source code. The documentation either explains how the software operates or how to use it, and may mean different things to people in ...

. It has three user-selectable input modes:

Emacs Emacs (), originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor Macros"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...

mode, Vim mode (based on the evil Emacs package for Vim emulation), and Hybrid mode. Spacemacs has a light and dark theme that are the fifth most downloaded emacs theme as of 2025 based on MELPA downloads. , its

repository Repository may refer to: Archives and online databases * Content repository, a database with an associated set of data management tools, allowing application-independent access to the content * Disciplinary repository (or subject repository), an ...

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

has been starred over 21,100 times and has over 11,300 commits.

References

External links

* * {{EmacsNavbox Emacs Free text editors Linux text editors Windows text editors MacOS text editors Software using the GNU General Public License Free software programmed in Lisp Cross-platform free software Free software for Linux Free software for Windows Free software for macOS

See also

References

External links