Xenodium
xenodium.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2015
Álvaro Ramírez writes about Emacs tooling, macOS and iOS integration, and his own apps such as Journelly.
What HN saysCommenters say he is doing excellent work for Emacs, recommend his blog to Emacs fans, and one bought his iOS app on other users' advice.
33HN people shared it
10linked it in comments
157stories submitted
1.5Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2015people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Emacs on macOS4 people · 39 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 2Previewing SwiftUI Layouts in Emacs4 people · 6 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 3Emacs: smarter search and replace (2021)3 people · 8 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 4Blurring the lines between shell and editor3 people · 7 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 5ChatGPT-Shell Updates3 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 6Emacs send-to (a.k.a. macOS sharing) merged upstream3 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 7Emacs Utilities for Your OS3 people · 2 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 8Emacs as your video-trimming tool2 people · 286 points · first shared 2025 · 167 comments on HN
- 9Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)2 people · 242 points · first shared 2025 · 46 comments on HN
- 10Inline previous result in Emacs Lisp2 people · 135 points · first shared 2023 · 13 comments on HN
- 11A Cloudflare Workers primer: hello world2 people · 19 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
- 12Emacs DWIM: swiper vs. isearch vs. phi-search2 people · 14 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 13My Emacs eye candy2 people · 11 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 14Show HN: Flat Habits – Org mode habits on iOS2 people · 7 points · first shared 2021 · 3 comments on HN
- 15A Murder at the End of the World: Are You Vi or Emacs?2 people · 6 points · first shared 2023 · 3 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
kleinishere · 2025-10-13
Xenodium is doing amazing things for emacs. If you enjoy this or are generally emacs interested, I’d check out his blog @ https://xenodium.com/
I also purchased my first iOS app upon recommendation from other emacs users - the author’s app, Journelly. A simple portable place to save down links or notes and export out as org files (as one option; apparently markdown is on the way). https://xenodium.com/journelly-for-ios
No affiliation to Xenodium. I’ve just been diving into emacs this year and love seeing his contributions.
xenodium · 2025-03-21
While the indieweb doesn't need to take off, I sure would love to see /some/ growth. The internet is a big place, so even a small but active percentage would offer sanctuary to folks wanting out of walled gardens, constant tracking, bloat, advertising...
I'd really like to see blogs be part of that small, but hopefully constant growth. We can builds hybrids that lean on some of the early greatness (rss), but also make it easy to publish (markdown) without the typical bloat, tracking, advertising, etc. of the modern web. Here's my attempt at building such a blogging service https://LMNO.lol. My blog runs on that too https://xenodium.com.
xz18r · 2025-08-11
There is a format called todo.txt that works follows very readable syntax (like your own example) and has some minimal bells and whistles if you want it to: http://todotxt.org/
As an alternative: I started using org-mode 5 years ago and have never looked back. This is my workflow (https://karelvo.com/blog/orgmode) although I sync it via Git now, and have an iPhone where I use Plain Org (https://xenodium.com/plain-org-for-ios).
internet_points · 2026-03-12
I love Emacs, and while that tour doesn't quite look 1978, it sure doesn't look 2026 either. Maybe somewhere in the middle.. yup, 2002 seems about right.
And for some reason, most of the screenshots on that page are in super low res, e.g. I see https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gnus-small.png instead of https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gnus.png , I really don't see why they'd want to make it look even worse.
And then on the other hand you have people like Nicolas Rougier https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fpbg8rzynfn9… or Álvaro Ramírez https://xenodium.com/awesome-emacs-on-macos who show how great it can really look.
PantaloonFlames · 2025-10-20
And also in emacs or neovim
https://xenodium.com/introducing-acpel
_ache_ · 2025-08-19
It's odd. There multiples problems on that blog.
https://xenodium.com/emacs-as-your-video-trimming-tool/
Is fixed and also fix various typo in the blog post. Bbut has other bugs, for example, the title link redirect to the bugged URL.
But (the bugged URL):
https://xenodium.com/emacs-as-your-video-trimming-tool Have the problems with relative links you talked about.
lvass · 2025-07-30
>I think it's only new features that would only exist on macOS that get pushback
Not even that anymore, it seems. https://xenodium.com/emacs-send-to-aka-macos-sharing-merged-upstream
tmtvl · 2023-05-04
There is a ChatGPT shell for Emacs: https://xenodium.com/chatgpt-shell-available-on-melpa/
ParetoOptimal · 2022-02-12
I remember this all working well many years ago so long as:
- the remote box has git, the LSP-server, or w/e you are trying to run
- you use SSH control master: https://xenodium.com/speeding-up-emacs-tramp-via-controlmaster/
DonHopkins · 2025-10-21
Oh sweet summer child.
http://xahlee.info/emacs/misc/emacs_macos_emoji.html
Color emoji was deliberately disabled on macOS (2016): policy first, parity later. Emacs 25 turned off multicolor fonts on the Cocoa port even though they worked, with a NEWS note saying they’d be re-enabled "once it is also implemented in Emacs on free operating systems." This was widely read as a political parity requirement that penalized macOS users for years.
https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html
"Prefer GNU/GNU-Linux" development time: an explicit guideline. GNU’s own standards advise spending time on features "useful on GNU and GNU/Linux, rather than on supporting other incompatible systems." That guideline has often been cited in Emacs discussions to argue against platform-specific work that would land only on macOS.
https://irreal.org/blog/?p=13137
https://xenodium.com/emacs-send-to-aka-macos-sharing-merged-upstream
macOS-only features face extra process friction, or must be generalized. The "send-to" (macOS Sharing) patch was finally merged in 2025 -- but only after a lengthy debate and a rework into a cross-platform framework to satisfy GNU policy concerns about adding features that target a non-free OS first. (The end result is good! -- but the path illustrates the extra hurdles for macOS-first work.)
https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac
Long-running reliance on mac-specific forks to get a polished UX. For years, many mac users have depended on Mitsuharu…