content/blog/2024-07-11-emacs-on-ipad.org

 1#+date:        <2024-07-11 Thursday 20:24:02>
 2#+title:       Installation and Usage Guide for Running Emacs Natively on Apple Silicon iPad
 3#+description: Procedural instructions for installing Emacs on iPadOS devices with Apple Silicon architecture, including configuration and operational guidance.
 4#+slug:        emacs-on-ipad
 5#+filetags:    :emacs:ipad:apple-silicon:
 6
 7This post describes the process to install and use Emacs on the iPad Air 13-inch
 8(M2). The iPad used in this post is running iPadOS 17.6.
 9
10** Shell Application
11
12In order to use Emacs on an iPad, you will need a terminal emulator application.
13I recommend [[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ish-shell/id1436902243][iSH]], since it runs a version of Alpine Linux within the app itself
14and will allow you to install packages that you need.
15
16#+caption: iSH Application
17[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20240711-emacs-on-ipad/ish.png]]
18
19** Require Packages
20
21I started by adding the required packages directly within iSH. Emacs should
22install dependencies by default, but I include a few other packages that I use
23in my terminal as well.
24
25#+begin_src sh
26apk add emacs ripgrep fd findutils
27#+end_src
28
29#+caption: Package !Installation
30[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20240711-emacs-on-ipad/dependencies.png]]
31
32** Emacs
33
34Once this is complete, you should be able to run Emacs natively on your iPad.
35It's effective, but can be slow at times.
36
37I attempted to also install Doom Emacs, which technically worked, but was so
38incredibly slow and buggy that I was not even able to take screenshots. Someone
39smarter than me could likely get it to work with a little tinkering.
40
41#+caption: Emacs
42[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20240711-emacs-on-ipad/emacs.png]]
43
44*** MELPA
45
46You also have to remember to hook up MELPA yourself in the =.emacs= file to be
47able to search through their 5700+ packages instead of just ELPA packages. If
48you don't, you will only have access to ELPA packages like the ones below.
49
50#+caption: package-install
51[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20240711-emacs-on-ipad/melpa.png]]
52
53Once you have MELPA, you can install packages like the =dashboard= package shown
54below.
55
56#+caption: emacs-dashboard
57[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20240711-emacs-on-ipad/dashboard.png]]
58
59*** Speed
60
61While Emacs will run on my iPad, it's not perfect. The largest issue on my iPad
62is speed - loading Emacs takes 6-7 seconds and installing the =magit= package
63took 129 seconds.
64
65I haven't played around enough to optimize loading times and poke around to see
66why the network requests take so long, but it's a big enough issue that I
67wouldn't see casual Emacs users dealing with the lag.