Doom tips

• Most used keys
• Navigation
• Editing
• Multiedit
• Search
• Org related
• Good to know
• Update Doom
• Install required files

Updated: 2022-08-01

Some tips to learn the keybindings in Doom and Evil in the process of migrating from my vanilla Emacs settings. For overview of keybindings type SPC-h-b-b. Other good references:

• Narra’s Blog - Doom Tips and Howtos
• Org Mode Shortcuts for Emacs Doom
• Gist of Hjertnes
• Evil-mode collection

Nice Doom Emacs Cheatsheet from niyumard.

Doom leader-key is SPC and localleader-key is SPC-m. When in Insert mode use M-SPC or M-SPC-m to call the menu available as in the Normal mode. Else change mode with ESC or jk binding. To toggle between Emacs state and Evil use C-z.

To show all your keybindings SPC-h b b

Most used keys

There are keys I mostly need to remember and there are also listen in their respective groups below:

Normal mode

• zx kill buffer
• SPC-w w move to buffer
• zz center line
• M-> and M-< go to end or start of the buffer
• SPC-i r insert from evil-register or 0p when you know it’s register number 0 in evil register or 1,2,…
• di( and yi( is both delete and yank inner words respectively.
• ciw change/clear the inner word under the cursor and move to inner mode.
• cw change/clear from cursor position to next whitespace
• cs"' change/clear the surround or delimiter " to ' symbol
• SPC-s s search word or /.
• SPC-TAB . change workspace.

Insert mode

• C-w kill word bakword
• M-d kill word forward

Visual mode (v) or Block Visual mode (Ctrl-v)

• viw select word under cursor or inner word under the cursor
• vio select all inner and inclding a symbol
• va( selecte all around the bracket ( or any specific symbol that you can specify eg. va"
• C-vjjI edit multiple lines
• g ; and g , go to last change in the current buffer forward or backward

Navigation

When in the Normal mode:

• C-b and C-f for page backward and page forward (whole page)
• C-u and C-d for half page up and down
• z-z move line to center of screen
• M-> and M-< go to end or start of the buffer
• gsj and gsk go to line downward (j) or upward (k) ie. avy-goto
• gsf and gsF go to forward (f) or backward(F) for selected letter
• fw and Fw find w or any word/symbols specified forward or backward in a line. Move to next foward or backward with f
• g; and g, go to last changed same buffer forward and backward
• '' and `` jump to mark-line and goto-mark but works as jump cursor to previous edited position too
• C-i and C-o jump to previous cursor forward or backward
• ma to mark position as a and use 'a to go to the line where the mark is or `a (backtick) to go to the position of the marked ie. a
• Shift-L and Shift-H moves cursor to lower (L) or higher (H) screen
• Shift-M moves cursor to the middle of the screen
• Split windows with Evil shorcut :sp or evil-window-split C-w s or evil-window-vsplit C-w v.
• SPC-s d search current directory or Spc-s p current project
• SPC-' resume last search
• % move to matching parantheses
• SPC-b-l or SPC-` move to last buffer

Editing

In Normal mode:

• db delete backward till next whitespace
• d$ delete to end of line from cursor
• d0 delete to start of line from cursor
• ds( delete columns or any parantheses specify after s ie. symbols
• cw kill from cursor position to next whitespace
• 4cw kill 4 words (or any number) forward
• ci{ kill all within the curly bracket when the cursor is inside. Other symbols can also be specified and when cursor is inside the specified symbols all text inside will be deleted.
• [o and ]o will insert newline above or below respectively
• C-j will cut/split the sentence
• gU for UPPERCASE or gu lowercase or g~ to toggle between
• :e edit file
• :w save file
• viw select a word under the cursor
• * select all word under the cursor in the buffer
• # select all word in the same line
• / search word
• vio select all inner and inclding a symbol
• va( selecte all around the bracket ( or any specific symbol that you can specify eg. va"
• di( and yi( is both delete and yank inner words respectively.
• ciw change the inner word under the cursor and move to inner mode.
• Spc-s s search word or fw and Fw
• S-" surround the selected word ie. in visual mode, with selected symbol eg. " in this case.
• g-S-" surround the selected word with symbol with additional newline
• cs"' change the surround or delimiter " to ' symbol
• ds" to delete the delimiters "

In Insert mode:

• C-w delete word backward

In Visual mode:

• Block all line and press = to do indentation

Multiedit

In a file one at a time

Doom uses multiedit package otherwise it’s like multiple-cursors package plus iedit package. Basic keybinding is M-d or M-D. It works both in Normal and Visual mode.

In Normal mode, when the course under a word, pressing M-d will select the word, repeating M-d mark forward and M-D mark backward. Use C-n and C-p for next and previous selected word. In Visual mode, when you have made selection pressing R will select all the marked section in the whole document.

Press Enter to deselect or reselect the marked section.

All in a file

Select the text then R

Search and replace in a project

• Search the text with SPC-s p.
• When all the files are listed, enter swiper edit with C-c C-e.
• Select the word then multiedit all word with R key, then edit.
• Save the file with C-c C-c or cancel with C-c C-k.

Add text at first line of multiple lines

This is when you want to change multiple first lines (Ref.):

• Move cursor to the first line 0.
• Enter visual block mode Ctrl-v
• Press j multiple times (or 5j) to jump by 5 lines, or G to jump to last line.
• Press I (capital i).
• Type the word to add. Note: it will only update the screen in the first line until Esc is pressed, then all lines will be updated.
• Press Esc.

Search

Different approach to search

Project

• SPC SPC find file in project
• SPC s p search project for text
• SPC s d search files in directory for text

M-x consult-ripgrep

Nice function for flexible search

• #alpha beta search for alpha and beta in any order
• #alpha.*beta search for alpha before beta
• #\(alpha\|beta\) search for alpha or beta
• #first#second search for first, quick filter for second

Regular expression

• To find unmatched quote using this regex ^[^"]*"[^"]*$

Online search

• SPC s o search online
• SPC s t search online dictionary

Org related

• SPC-m-h to change to heading
• SPC-m-i to change to item
• Shift-TAB to move backward in table

Good to know

• SPC-h-v or C-h v to check the value or default value of any function.
• SPC-TAB-TAB change workspace
• C-x C-t transpose line
• M-t transpose words

Update Doom

Usually it should work to update Doom by running

~/.emacs.d/bin/doom upgrade
~/.emacs.d/bin/doom sync

But if it fails, you can delete the package that fails. For instance if package gcmh fails then

rm -rf ~/.emacs.d/.local/straight/gcmh
doom sync

The easiest is to delete folder .local/straight entirely before doom sync. Or pull everything and re-install

cd ~/.emacs.d
rm -rf .local
git pull
bin/doom install

Install required files

You need to install some prerequisite to make doom work properly. Among them:

• ripgrep

  To ensure you install the newest release, you can check it here ripgrep releases.

cd ~/Downloads
curl -LO https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/releases/download/13.0.0/ripgrep_13.0.0_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i ripgrep_13.0.0_amd64.deb

• +spell

  If you use +spell then you need to install hunspell.

sudo apt install hunspell