Meow: Yet another modal editing on Emacs
5 comments
·September 13, 2025jasperry
I gave Meow a fair shake a year or so ago. I'd say it's currently the most robust mode for implementing Kakoune or Helix-like bindings in Emacs, but you can customize it to be like vim or anything else. It's more lightweight than evil-mode. At present, however, I'm not using modal editing in emacs; just lots of Meta-key shortcuts for movement and a hydra with a key-chord for common commands.
smlavine
The god-mode minor mode that is linked is also mind-boggling: https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode
skydhash
I have god-mode installed, but I've basically forgot about it as Emacs have a different model of editing than Vim.
With Vim, text editing feels like playing the piano. For every action, you compose a sequence of bindings and execute on it. It is really a language of editing.
Emacs feels more like blacksmithing, hammering the text into a proper shape. There's no composition, you just select the correct tools and applies it. And emacs have a lot of those tools.
smlavine
It's really cool to see this and other recent experimentation towards breaking past the local maximum of modal editing we've been in since Vi. Really neat stuff!
It's one of the best designed packages I've seen. Except 'repeat' that was horribly broken last time I checked but can be fixed by using the repeat-fu package. Manages to cleanly implement the kakoune model in an incredibly flexible manner and without interfering with anything else.
I still have my meow config, but currently disabled. The kakoune model is definitely what you're looking for if your desire is to edit text with the fewest keystrokes, it's far better than vim. I think the vim model is better, though, because motion-as-selection is fundamentally exhaustive, and in vim, by the time you realize what you're going to do, you go into operator pending mode (e.g. pressing d) and the next keystroke also feels obvious, while in meow you may have to reset the selection by doing some movement.
What works best for me is no modal editing at all. Definitely requires the most keystrokes, but that's not a limiting factor for me. It just feels nice never having to think about modes or constantly pressing Esc, and instead navigating with a mixture of default Emacs keybinds and great, joyous to use packages like Avy, smartparens, tempel and combobulate. Meow's KEYPAD is also not really helpful, it does save some keystrokes but doesn't make anything easier to remember or reach for. For the commands that it is worse, it is much worse.