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| 2 | date = 2024-07-11T20:24:02 | |
| 3 | title = "Emacs on iPadOS" | |
| 4 | description = "Learn how to install and use Emacs on the Apple Silicon iPad natively." | |
| 5 | draft = true | |
| 6 | +++ | |
| 7 | ||
| 8 | This post describes the process to install and use Emacs on the iPad Air 13-inch | |
| 9 | (M2). The iPad used in this post is running iPadOS 17.6. | |
| 10 | ||
| 11 | ## Shell Application | |
| 12 | ||
| 13 | In order to use Emacs on an iPad, you will need a terminal emulator application. | |
| 14 | I recommend [iSH](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ish-shell/id1436902243), since | |
| 15 | it runs a version of Alpine Linux within the app itself and will allow you to | |
| 16 | install packages that you need. | |
| 17 | ||
| 18 |  | |
| 19 | ||
| 20 | ## Require Packages | |
| 21 | ||
| 22 | I started by adding the required packages directly within iSH. Emacs should | |
| 23 | install dependencies by default, but I include a few other packages that I use | |
| 24 | in my terminal as well. | |
| 25 | ||
| 26 | ```sh | |
| 27 | apk add emacs ripgrep fd findutils | |
| 28 | ``` | |
| 29 | ||
| 30 |  | |
| 31 | ||
| 32 | ## Emacs | |
| 33 | ||
| 34 | Once this is complete, you should be able to run Emacs natively on your iPad. | |
| 35 | It's fairly effective, but can be slow at times. | |
| 36 | ||
| 37 | I attempted to also install Doom Emacs, which technically worked, but was so | |
| 38 | incredibly slow and buggy that I was not even able to take screenshots. Someone | |
| 39 | smarter than me could likely get it to work with a little tinkering. | |
| 40 | ||
| 41 |  | |
| 42 | ||
| 43 | ### Annoyances | |
| 44 | ||
| 45 | While Emacs is running at this point, it's not perfect. There is no `.emacs` | |
| 46 | file by default, installing a framework like Doom seemed to be too much, and | |
| 47 | some utilities and packages are missing from the bare Alpine installation. | |
| 48 | ||
| 49 | There also seems to be a problem getting a wider selection of packages from | |
| 50 | MELPA, but you can see below that a handful of readily-available packages. I | |
| 51 | likely just need to change my configuration for MELPA, but I did not explore | |
| 52 | this area further. | |
| 53 | ||
| 54 | You can test this out yourself with `M-x package-install <search-termœ>`. | |
| 55 | ||
| 56 |  | |