emacsclient-automator

Tiny Automator workflows to make it easier to re-use your running Emacs.

Emacs users like to keep a single instance of their editor running, and merely open files in it. To do this easily from outside Emacs, Emacs comes with a tiny executable called emacsclient. From a command line, just run emacsclient file.

From GUIs like macOS's Finder, you can drag and drop a file onto your Emacs window, but it is nice to bypass this as we do with other apps.

Choose either the app or the service, instructions below: you might not need both.

Known issues

1. Warning these are hardcoded to the path Homebrew uses for emacsclient: /usr/local/bin/emacsclient. If your emacsclient is elsewhere, you must edit the workflow.

2. This only works well with folders and text files. It behaves very oddly, for example, with PNG images, and does not open the image file.

App

(steps 2 and 3 are optional - you can run an app from anywhere, but it might be easier for you to find in your Applications folder)

1. cd && git clone https://github.com/paironaut/emacsclient-automator.git
2. cd emacsclient-automator
3. cp -R withEmacsApp.app /Applications

To use it:

4. start the Emacs server (for example with M-x server-start or emacs --daemon)
5. open a Finder window and ctrl-click a file.
6. select 'Open with' then 'Other...'
7. a file sector pops up: find and select withEmacs
8. optionally, if you want to always use emacsclient to open this file, select the 'Always Open With' checkbox
9. select 'Open'
10. when you are finished editing type C-x # or M-x server-edit.

There are many other options in macOS for using an app like this to open a file, such as the 'Open with: Change All ...' button in the Finder Info window. Investigate these with Apple's documentation.

Service

1. cd && git clone https://github.com/paironaut/emacsclient-automator.git
2. cd emacsclient-automator
3. open
4. In Finder, double-click on withEmacs.workflow and agree to install it.

To use it:

4. start the Emacs server (for example with M-x server-start or emacs --daemon)
5. open a Finder window and ctrl-click a file.
6. select 'Services >' from the bottom of the popup menu (if it appears)
7. select 'withEmacs'.
8. when you are finished editing type C-x # or M-x server-edit.

Credit and troubleshooting

The idea for this came from a Reddit post that I can't find at the moment. So I don't have to relearn Automator each time I configure a Mac, I have posted the resulting code in this public git repository.

For configuration tips, see https://stackoverflow.com/a/39907215

Wishlist

1. a custom icon
2. make the icon appear on associated files
3. drag and drop files onto the app icon

Coming soon

Control Emacs from your watch.

Contributing

Use Automator.app built in to macOS to edit these workflows. We'll consider helpful pull requests. See the wishlist above.

Copyright and license

Copyright 2018, David Corking and the emacsclient-automator contributors. Open source MIT License, see LICENSE.txt