How to launch GUI Emacs from command line in OSX? - macos

Question

How do I launch GUI Emacs from the command line in OSX?
I have downloaded and installed Emacs from http://emacsformacosx.com/.
I'll accept an answer fulfilling all of the following criteria:
The emacs window opens in front of my terminal window.
Typing "emacs" launches a GUI Emacs window. Finding files in that window will default to looking in the directory from where I started Emacs.
Typing "emacs foo.txt" when foo.txt exists launches a GUI Emacs window with foo.txt loaded.
Typing "emacs foo.txt" when foo.txt does not exist launches a GUI Emacs window with an empty text buffer named "foo.txt". Doing ^X^S in that buffer will save foo.txt in the directory from where I started Emacs.

Answer 1

Call the following script "emacs" and put it in your PATH somewhere:
#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#"
That covers #2, #3, and #4.
For #1, put this somewhere in your .emacs file:
(x-focus-frame nil)
The emacsformacosx.com site now has a How-To page, which is where the top snippet came from. There's more info there about running emacsclient and hooking Emacs up to git mergetool.

Answer 2

In your shell, alias the command 'emacs' to point to the OSX emacs application
In my shell (running the default bash), I have the following (in my .bashrc)
alias emacs='open -a /Applications/Emacs.app $1'
Then, typing emacs on the command line starts the emacs application.
I would, however, recommend that you open a copy of emacs and just keep it up and running. If that's the case, and you want to load a file into an existing copy of emacs, you can use the emacsclient by placing the following in your .bashrc:
alias ec='/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacsclient'
Then add the following to your .emacs file to start the emacs server (which receives the emacsclient calls)
;;========================================
;; start the emacsserver that listens to emacsclient
(server-start)
Then you can type
ec .bashrc
to load a copy of .bashrc into an existing emacs session!

Answer 3

This improves on David Caldwell's answer by starting Emacs in the background:
#!/bin/sh
$(/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#") &
As stated in the other answer, this covers #2, #3, and #4. For #1, put this somewhere in your .emacs file: (x-focus-frame nil).
Note that the following does not work for me -- it does not start Emacs in a directory specified on the command line (e.g. emacs .)
# NOT RECOMMENDED
#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#" &

Answer 4

I assume you either:
Start the emacs daemon on login
Have (server-start) in your .emacs
Don't mind having lots of separate copies of emacs running
If so, then I think this satisfies the original four criteria, plus one more:
The emacs window opens in front of my terminal window.
it will always open to the foreground (with x-focus-frame).
Typing "emacs" launches a GUI Emacs window. Finding files in that window will default to looking in the directory from where I started Emacs.
It will open an existing emacs window in dired mode.
Typing "emacs foo.txt" when foo.txt exists launches a GUI Emacs window with foo.txt loaded.
If emacs is already running and has a server, then it will open in the existing window and come to the foreground.
Typing "emacs foo.txt" when foo.txt does not exist launches a GUI Emacs window with an empty text buffer named "foo.txt". Doing ^X^S in that buffer will save foo.txt in the directory from where I started Emacs.
Correct.
One extra:
Control returns to the terminal session immediately after typing the command.
~/bin/emacs
#!/bin/bash
EMACSPATH=/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS
# Check if an emacs server is available
# (by checking to see if it will evaluate a lisp statement)
if ! (${EMACSPATH}/bin/emacsclient --eval "t" 2> /dev/null > /dev/null )
then
# There is no server available so,
# Start Emacs.app detached from the terminal
# and change Emac's directory to PWD
nohup ${EMACSPATH}/Emacs --chdir "${PWD}" "${#}" 2>&1 > /dev/null &
else
# The emacs server is available so use emacsclient
if [ -z "${#}" ]
then
# There are no arguments, so
# tell emacs to open a new window
${EMACSPATH}/bin/emacsclient --eval "(list-directory \"${PWD}\")"
else
# There are arguments, so
# tell emacs to open them
${EMACSPATH}/bin/emacsclient --no-wait "${#}"
fi
# Bring emacs to the foreground
${EMACSPATH}/bin/emacsclient --eval "(x-focus-frame nil)"
fi

Answer 5

On Mountain Lion, I am using Yamamoto Mitsuharu's port https://github.com/railwaycat/emacs-mac-port with the following alias:
alias emacs=/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs
and it satisfies all of your criteria.

Answer 6

Just built emacs with homebrew package manager according to this guide:
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS
with brew install --cocoa emacs
After that one should launch the .app version to get gui, which in my case was /usr/local/Cellar/emacs/24.3/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs

Answer 7

Further improving on David James' response the following works for me:
Per instructions to open a file from a terminal found at http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS#toc20
open -a /Applications/Emacs.app <file-name>
combining this with David Jame's response I've created the following emax bash script and placed it in my path at ~/bin
#!/bin/bash
(open -a /Applications/Emacs.app "$#") &
Caveat: in order to get emacs to open the current directory in Dired by name mode, you need to use
emax .
Environment:
OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.2
GNU Emacs 24.4.2 (x86_64-apple-darwin14.0.0, NS apple-appkit-1343.14)
of 2014-11-13

Answer 8

Simple solution...
A lot of very complex solutions to this problem are posted here. That's fair because it seems non-trivial.
However, this solution works really well for me.
ec() {
emacsclient -n $# 2> /dev/null
if [[ $? == 1 ]]; then
open -a Emacs.app -- $#
fi
}
Usage
ec file [...]
Let's unpack what's happening:
pass all the ec arguments to emacsclient and don't (-n) wait for emacs before continuing.
If Emacs is already running, we're all done and you're editing.
swallow up the error message posted by emacsclient when there's no emacs running. (2> /dev/null)
Manually handle the exit code 1 ([[ $? == 1 ]])
open Emacs.app and pass file arguments to it (paths will be correctly opened.)
You're all done, and Emacs has opened your files.

Answer 9

The other answers here didn't quite work for me. In particular, on my machine, the bash script
#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#"
always opens emacs in the home directory. To get it to open in the current working directory, I had to do
#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$PWD/$#"
instead.

Answer 10

Compile Emacs according to the following steps:
./configure --with-x --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install
And your done! It may help to download and install XQuartz, but that's just my opinion.

Answer 11

This is my script for open emacs/emacsclient on osx.
#!/bin/bash
# Ensure (server-start) is added in your emacs init script.
EMACS=/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs
EMACSCLIENT=/Applications/Macports/Emacs.app/\
Contents/MacOS/bin/emacsclient
# test if client already exsit.
$EMACSCLIENT -e "(frames-on-display-list)" &>/dev/null
# use emacsclient to connect existing server.
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
$EMACSCLIENT -n "$#"
# open emacs.app instead.
else
`$EMACS "$#"` &
fi

Answer 12

In all of the above when using "open" - make sure you use the "--args" option
Do not do this:
alias emacs='open -a /Applications/Emacs.app $1'
Instead this:
alias emacs='open -a /Applications/Emacs.app --args $1'
the --args option prevents "open" from consuming various options intended for Emacs.

Answer 13

The top answer is good, but I wanted the emacs process to run in the background so I could still use my shell. This answer appeared to do what I wanted, but didn't start emacs in the right directory, meaning absolute paths were required (or hacks to append pwd to the paths which wouldn't work in all cases). Furthermore, simply using & meant that if I killed the terminal, emacs would also be killed.
I decided to use screen and a bash function, and the following solution works for me on macOS 10.15.6 and emacs 26.2 installed with brew:
function emacs() {
screen -d -m /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#"
}
For the meaning of the -d -m command line flags, they have a special meaning when used together and so can essentially be thought of as one command line flag. The explanation is in the manpage:
Start screen in "detached" mode. This creates a new session but doesn't attach to it. This is useful for system startup scripts.

Answer 14

open_emacs() {
num=$(ps aux | grep -E "[E]macs-x86_64-10_14 --|[e]macs --" | wc -l)
if [ $num -eq 0 ]; then
echo "## starting emacs"
# Run in a subshell to remove notifications and close STDOUT and STDERR:
(&>/dev/null emacsclient -t -q &)
fi
}
alias e="open_emacs"
Following line (&>/dev/null emacsclient -t -q &) will start the emacs daemon if it is not running on the background.
macOS may have defined the app name starting with E (ex: Emacs-x86_64-10_14.app), based on that you can check whether the emacs daemon running on the background or not.

Answer 15

Just want to update a response to this question. Since it is still a relevant question, but now there is an easier solution:
brew install --cask emacs
When this installs Emacs, it does the behavior you requested, without further intervention. It even runs the Emacs Server on startup.
Files installed/linked by default:
ebrowse -> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/ebrowse
emacs -> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs
emacsclient -> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacsclient
etags -> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/etags
BTW, this is now a recommended way of installing Emacs on MacOS:
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html#nonfree