Some useful settings for Emacs on Android

I use now Native graphical Emacs on Android since several months on my tablet and phone. I’m not aware of any specific packages to support the usage but want to share a few settings that I find quite helpful.

Like the majority of Emacs users (judging from the configs people share) I turn off tool-bar and menu-bar on my desktop emacs.

Contrary to a desktop emacs the tool-bar and menu-bar are quite useful on a phone. Maybe the reason is that the touch interface is fairly similar to using a mouse.

(menu-bar-mode +1)
(tool-bar-mode +1)
(setq tool-bar-position 'bottom)

This setting enables the tool-bar and menu-bar and moves the tool-bar to the bottom below the modeline. That makes it much easier to reach from the keyboard.

Of course tool-bar and menu-bar are turned on by default so these settings are not strictly necessary but I like setting them explicitly.

Usually the on-screen keyboard isn’t always shown which created some issues for me. Setting

(setq touch-screen-display-keyboard t)

ensures you see the keyboard whenever you start emacs.

Similarly I also find this setting useful

(modifier-bar-mode +1)

It shows a menu with all the special keys you need for Emacs but usually are not present on an Android keyboard.

Most of the time I use the Unexpected-Keyboard which has all of them but that doesn’t provide autocompletion like the standard keyboard (Samsung keyboard in my case). Hence for writing prose as e.g. this post I prefer the standard keyboard. Then this setting is quite handy.