I just saw this tweet from Vivek Haldar
Little-known fact: Common #Emacs Shortcuts (C-{a, e, k, y, n, p, b, f}) work *universally* in Mac OS X. In any text box in any app.
— Vivek Haldar (@vivekhaldar) July 18, 2020
and thought that it’s probably time for Irreal’s semiperiodic reminder that the reality is actually much better than a few default Emacs keybindings.
As I wrote back in 2011, you can customize the keybindings for many of macOS’s editing commands. It’s really easy to setup. You just download a file, rename it, stash it in your ~/Library/KeyBindings folder, and enjoy Emacs editing keybindings across your entire system. Even if we can’t stay in Emacs all the time, at least we can take our muscle memory with us when we’re forced to leave. All the details are in the 2011 post, so take a look at that if you’re interested.
By the way, I checked the links and they’re all still good even after the 14 years since Rus originally wrote about this.