Where humanity goes, evil [1] follows.
[1] https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil
In When did our tools become our religion?emacs-evil
evil
Emacs Lisp2017–2026
emacs-evil / evil
evil
The extensible vi layer for Emacs.
39Distinct people
46Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
3.9KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
The extensible vi layer for Emacs.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
> What both Emacs and Vim have in common is an intimidating learning curve. You can't just dip your toe in. Another thing that Emacs and Vim have in common is Vim…
nequo used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- doomemacs/core · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- meow-edit/meow · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:02:05 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year46 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-04-15 22:23:13 UTC to 2026-07-30 17:45:40 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 1 | 11 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Evil is an extensible vi layer
for Emacs. It emulates the main features
of Vim, and provides facilities for writing custom
extensions. Also see our page on EmacsWiki.
Installation
See the
official documentation
for installation instructions. We recommend using package.el.
As a quickstart, you can add the following code to your Emacs init
file.
;; Set up package.el to work with MELPA
(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
'("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))
(package-initialize)
(package-refresh-contents)
;; Download Evil
(unless (package-installed-p 'evil)
(package-install 'evil))
;; Enable Evil
(require 'evil)
(evil-mode 1)
Dependencies
Evil requires Emacs 24.1 or later.
Evil requires any of the following for C-r:
undo-redo from Emacs 28
The undo-tree package (available via GNU ELPA)
The undo-fu package (available via MELPA and NonGNU ELPA)
For the motions g; g, and for the last-change-register ., Evil
requires the goto-chg.el
package (available via MELPA and NonGNU ELPA), which provides the
functions goto-last-change and goto-last-change-reverse.
For Emacs 24.1 and 24.2 Evil also requires
cl-lib.
Documentation
The latest version of the documentation is readable online
here. It is also
available as
PDF and
as EPUB.
Mailing list
Evil is discussed at the
gmane.emacs.vim-emulation
mailing list.
IRC
Visit us on irc.libera.chat #evil-mode.
Contribution
See
CONTRIBUTING.md
for guidelines for issues and pull requests.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
10 sourcesIt already has a good editor. It’s called evil mode:
https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil
In Emacs should become a Wayland compositorI don't think there's anything like that for Emacs. At least, I've not heard of it. I mostly learned it through reading stuff like Mastering Emacs and watching YouTube videos, as well as testing out other peoples configs.
UX wise, it's pretty different but I know a lot of people use Evil (https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil) or something similar to get a more vi like experience out of Emacs. If you're not vested in an Emacs workflow, or don't have one at all, I think it's worth checking out other peoples configs.
The biggest benefit of Emacs is that you can do some much from one place. That's much less context switching that you have to do, and I can see why some people prefer it.
In An Interview with Mickey Petersen, Author of Mastering Emacs> But at the same time, it is a whole new system to learn and get into, very specific to itself
If you already know Vim keybindings, it is very easy to get into Emacs with evil-mode.[1]
Besides that, Emacs by default comes with a menu system that helps you discover keybindings, too. And there is also cua-mode which I haven’t tried.[2]
[1] https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil
[2] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CuaMode
In Joining the Church of EmacsI haven't found that to be the case.
https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil
In Open Source PC That Fits in Your PocketI have an article I wrote about how I did this, but may have lost it to time.
The short version is I have SLIME running inside Emacs, and my text files open in vim. I would just reload the changed file(s) when needed (originally with cl:load-file, then later with asdf, which is roughly "make" for lisp). I used slime similarly to how I would use gdb. It was a big improvement over using vim with the clisp[1] REPL both because SLIME was more powerful than the clisp repl, and because it worked with other implementations like CMU CL (which sbcl now is a fork of).
I mostly just used the menus for interacting with emacs, but since the shortcuts are listed beside commands, I did learn the more commonly used ones.
I continued like this for years until I discoveredevil-mode[2], which was the first thing close enough to vim to be usable for me (a
Read the rest
nd even then I had to add a few keybindings that it was missing).
1: clisp is a specific implementation of common lisp, not an abbreviation
2: https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil
What parts did you find difficult?
When I first started, I found the keybindings odd, but now I love them since the core set of shortcuts—C-a, C-e, C-f, etc.—work "everywhere" from the terminal, to GNU readline-based programs, to even native macOS text boxes. If you don't like the default keybindings, you can change them or use the Evil package [0] for Vim bindings.
If you want to get up and running quickly, I'd check out Doom Emacs [1] which is easier to configure and takes care of a lot of configuration for you. I personally use a reasonably-minimal config I wrote myself [2]. If you like to tinker, I'd recommend writing your own config, as it will also teach you a lot about Emacs.
If you have any questions feel free to reach out—contact info in my profile.
[0] https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil
[1] https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
Read the rest
> Well, there's a lot of games inside emacs
There's a text editor [1] available too.
[1] https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil
In TUIsDon't get me started on the Evil Mode emacs users, trying to have it both ways.
https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil
In Vim prank: alias vim='vim -y'or just alias it to emacs with 'evil-mode' :D
https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil
In Vim prank: alias vim='vim -y'