I am new to macOS and a big fan of Emacs. I am trying to achieve Emacs keybindings everywhere.
Despite the fact that I have read multiple times on the web people stating that macOS was friendly and out of the box with Emacs keybindings, I am having some hassles. Obviously, the problems happen outside of Emacs. In Emacs, things work as expected.
I am struggling with copy, paste, cut, for instance. But I also used to have problems with those in Linux (Ubuntu/NixOs).
Unlike in macOS, in Linux I managed to get M-b
(move back word) and M-f
(move forward) to work.
It is possible to do it with Command-M-b
and Command-M-f
but I do not want to change my habbit/muscle memory. I want to make this new computer adapt to me - not the opposite.
Some old posts (like #1, #2, #3, #4) mention a tweak on ~/Library/KeyBindings/
. By the way, a lot of posts are mentioning Jacob Rus' comprehensive guide which is hosted on Harvard University domain.... But the link is broken.
Unfortunately, I cannot even find this folder:
Pedros-MacBook-Air:Library pedro$ pwd
/Users/pedro/Library
Pedros-MacBook-Air:Library pedro$ cd Key
Keyboard/ Keyboard Layouts/ KeyboardServices/ Keychains/
How to find ~/Library/KeyBindings/
in Mac M1 Monterey 12.5?
Should I create it?
Also, others posting more recent content are suggesting other alternatives, such as Karabiner-elements (#1 #2). Karabiner-elements can also be useful for short keys to launch applications.
What is the best technical practice to change keybindings in macOS? What are the technical arguments around every solution?