cmc/cleberg.net

 1#+date:        [2024-07-11 Thu 20:24:02]
 2#+title:       Running Emacs Natively on an Apple Silicon iPad
 3#+description: Installing and running Emacs natively on an iPad with Apple Silicon.
 4#+slug:        emacs-on-ipad
 5#+filetags:    :emacs:
 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#+attr_html: :alt The iSH shell on iPad.
18[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20240711-emacs-on-ipad/ish.webp]]
19
20** Require Packages
21
22I started by adding the required packages directly within iSH. Emacs should
23install dependencies by default, but I include a few other packages that I use
24in my terminal as well.
25
26#+begin_src sh
27apk add emacs ripgrep fd findutils
28#+end_src
29
30#+caption: Package Installation
31#+attr_html: :alt Showing command "apk add emacs ripgrep rf findutils" within iSH.
32[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20240711-emacs-on-ipad/dependencies.webp]]
33
34** Emacs
35
36Once this is complete, you should be able to run Emacs natively on your iPad.
37It's effective, but can be slow at times.
38
39I attempted to also install Doom Emacs, which technically worked, but was so
40incredibly slow and buggy that I was not even able to take screenshots. Someone
41smarter than me could likely get it to work with a little tinkering.
42
43*** MELPA
44
45You also have to remember to hook up MELPA yourself in the =.emacs= file to be
46able to search through their 5700+ packages instead of just ELPA packages. If
47you don't, you will only have access to ELPA packages like the ones below.
48
49#+caption: package-install
50#+attr_html: :alt A full list of all packages available when searching MELPA.
51[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20240711-emacs-on-ipad/melpa.webp]]
52
53Once you have MELPA, you can install packages like the =dashboard= package shown
54below.
55
56#+caption: emacs-dashboard
57#+attr_html: :alt An example of the emacs-dashboard package.
58[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20240711-emacs-on-ipad/dashboard.webp]]
59
60*** Speed
61
62While Emacs will run on my iPad, it's not perfect. The largest issue on my iPad
63is speed - loading Emacs takes 6-7 seconds and installing the =magit= package
64took 129 seconds.
65
66I haven't played around enough to optimize loading times and poke around to see
67why the network requests take so long, but it's a big enough issue that I
68wouldn't see casual Emacs users dealing with the lag.