7 ms·

Specifically for org, and specifically for org-roam, it's pretty good, but not good enough. It's not as good as desktop emacs, and it's also somehow not as good

by rrix2 10mo ago

Specifically for org, and specifically for org-roam, it's pretty good, but not good enough. It's not as good as desktop emacs, and it's also somehow not as good as a 1st class android app. the fdroid build of emacs doesn't really work very well with my org-roam, so i use a termux build,,, well nix-on-droid+emacs-overlay... and it's fine, for capture and recall. but i'm not authoring a lot of text with it. a custom extra-keys in the termux config so that your common emacs keybindings are on screen in a tool bar can get you close to a point-and-click interface... but you don't really have a good "swipe" input or voice input to input text efficiently, it's a character interface, a TUI, which is actually not what you want on a phone, you want a word-based interface. so when i want to do org-mode right now, i pull a unihertz titan 2 out of my pocket. without a sim card, the titan battery lasts for about three days unless i fire up an nix devShell & lsp server on it. calc-mode is my default android calculator tho. tbh don't listen to me, though: i've been teaching myself 8vim[1] and building a markdown document graph database in my free time. don't listen to ~any emacs user's opinion with any authority, we all have found our own local minima, our opinions and advice usually aren't so useful to each other I didn't know about modified-bar-mode, though, that's neat. [1] https://f-droid.org/packages/inc.flide.vi8/ https://f-droid.org/packages/inc.flide.vi8/

phatskat 10mo ago
> don't listen to ~any emacs user's opinion with any authority As a vim user, I suppose it’s proper to say “I don’t” :p Also as a vim user, no one should listen to mine with any authority — Jokes aside, 8vim looks pretty slick! I don’t have an android to play around with at the moment but if I remember this I’ll check it out when I do. Text input on phones for anything beyond prose seems to be a space ripe for innovation - although, as an iPhone user, the amount of anything technical I want to do from my phone approaches zero quickly.
procaryote 10mo ago
If you swipe left on the shortcut bar ("esc" "/" etc) in the termux keyboard, it switches to a word oriented text input area where you can use predictive text and swipe text. Swipe that area right when done to get back to the modifiers
- rrix2 10mo ago
  i find that unless i swipe perfectly, the input is considered in the textbox not the bar, so i can't easily swipe out of it. :( have never really got the hang of it. i wish there was a button to swap in/out, i guess i could do some simple android dev but i'd rather not
yehoshuapw 10mo ago
have you also used thumbkey (or messagease) by any chance? if so - can you compare them? (I use thumbkey, but when I ran across 8vim considered switching however I use thumbkey fluently and am not sure if worth switching)
- rrix2 10mo ago
  i was pretty quick with thumbkey, it's nice on even a tiny device like a Jelly Star. nowhere near as quick with 8vim on any device yet.
IceDane 10mo ago
> don't listen to ~any emacs user's opinion I sort of came here to say the same thing. The intersection between (the set of people who care about good UX) and (the set of people who would try to use emacs on android) is the empty set. Emacs users' self-flagellation is pretty legendary, and I say this as an emacs user (though I've mostly given up on how janky and slow it is compared to modern editors and only use it for magit these days)
- rrix2 10mo ago
  i didn't mean it in such a disdainful or self-flagellating way, though. emacs is a bag of tricks, and each of us pull a different set of them out.
- xenodium 10mo ago
  I’m an Emacs enthusiast and also build iOS apps powered by org markup. The more I used my apps, the more I wanted their UX optimised for mobile. This often means completely rethinking the Emacs experience when bringing to mobile. This is most obvious in my latest app [1]. Org markup fully fades as implementation details. Of all my apps, this is the one I personally use the most. Proudly, I also started getting non-Emacs users interested in org [2]. Anyway, that’s all to say that as an Emacs fan, I want the full Emacs experience on desktop, but when on iPhone, I want fully optimised mobile UX. No meta anything there ;) [1] https://xenodium.com/journelly-like-tweeting-but-for-your-eyes-only https://xenodium.com/journelly-like-tweeting-but-for-your-ey... [2] https://ellanew.com/ptpl/157-2025-05-19-journelly-is-org-for-those-who-dont-do-org https://ellanew.com/ptpl/157-2025-05-19-journelly-is-org-for...
  - skydhash 10mo ago
    Emacs is ultimately an REPL environment, but ones where you can bind commands to bindings. And there’s a lot of bindings possible in a keyboard. A mobile experience can be fine if you want a restricted subset of commands. You can then map them to buttons. But the core emacs experience is the ability to create your own commands and have different bindings. The closest implementation, IMO, would be a streamdeck like UI, but with a transient or hydra like UX.

by rrix2 10mo ago

phatskat 10mo ago

> don't listen to ~any emacs user's opinion with any authority As a vim user, I suppose it’s proper to say “I don’t” :p Also as a vim user, no one should listen to mine with any authority — Jokes aside, 8vim looks pretty slick! I don’t have an android to play around with at the moment but if I remember this I’ll check it out when I do. Text input on phones for anything beyond prose seems to be a space ripe for innovation - although, as an iPhone user, the amount of anything technical I want to do from my phone approaches zero quickly.

procaryote 10mo ago

If you swipe left on the shortcut bar ("esc" "/" etc) in the termux keyboard, it switches to a word oriented text input area where you can use predictive text and swipe text. Swipe that area right when done to get back to the modifiers

rrix2 10mo ago
i find that unless i swipe perfectly, the input is considered in the textbox not the bar, so i can't easily swipe out of it. :( have never really got the hang of it. i wish there was a button to swap in/out, i guess i could do some simple android dev but i'd rather not

yehoshuapw 10mo ago

have you also used thumbkey (or messagease) by any chance? if so - can you compare them? (I use thumbkey, but when I ran across 8vim considered switching however I use thumbkey fluently and am not sure if worth switching)

rrix2 10mo ago
i was pretty quick with thumbkey, it's nice on even a tiny device like a Jelly Star. nowhere near as quick with 8vim on any device yet.

IceDane 10mo ago

> don't listen to ~any emacs user's opinion I sort of came here to say the same thing. The intersection between (the set of people who care about good UX) and (the set of people who would try to use emacs on android) is the empty set. Emacs users' self-flagellation is pretty legendary, and I say this as an emacs user (though I've mostly given up on how janky and slow it is compared to modern editors and only use it for magit these days)

rrix2 10mo ago
i didn't mean it in such a disdainful or self-flagellating way, though. emacs is a bag of tricks, and each of us pull a different set of them out.
xenodium 10mo ago
I’m an Emacs enthusiast and also build iOS apps powered by org markup. The more I used my apps, the more I wanted their UX optimised for mobile. This often means completely rethinking the Emacs experience when bringing to mobile. This is most obvious in my latest app [1]. Org markup fully fades as implementation details. Of all my apps, this is the one I personally use the most. Proudly, I also started getting non-Emacs users interested in org [2]. Anyway, that’s all to say that as an Emacs fan, I want the full Emacs experience on desktop, but when on iPhone, I want fully optimised mobile UX. No meta anything there ;) [1] https://xenodium.com/journelly-like-tweeting-but-for-your-eyes-only https://xenodium.com/journelly-like-tweeting-but-for-your-ey... [2] https://ellanew.com/ptpl/157-2025-05-19-journelly-is-org-for-those-who-dont-do-org https://ellanew.com/ptpl/157-2025-05-19-journelly-is-org-for...
- skydhash 10mo ago
  Emacs is ultimately an REPL environment, but ones where you can bind commands to bindings. And there’s a lot of bindings possible in a keyboard. A mobile experience can be fine if you want a restricted subset of commands. You can then map them to buttons. But the core emacs experience is the ability to create your own commands and have different bindings. The closest implementation, IMO, would be a streamdeck like UI, but with a transient or hydra like UX.