Using Emacs - 7- Navigation with Avy

Here's a really cool navigation method that I've been meaning to use more. Avy is a replacement for ace-jump mode which is an implementation of easymotion, a vim plugin.

It's pretty cool and lets you quickly navigate to any spot on the screen.

After triggering avy, or more specifically the avy-goto-char function, emacs prompts you for a single character. When you type it, all instances of the character that start out words change to a highlighted letter. Type the highlighted letter and you jump to that location.

The avy package comes with a bunch of options including a 2 character search variant, a timed variant which drops into search, and more.

The Avy home page has all the details.

Here's the configuration I'm using:

(use-package avy
  :ensure t
  :bind ("M-s" . avy-goto-char))

You can check the avy home page for their recommended configuration which you get by configuring this way instead:

(use-package avy
  :ensure t
  :config
  (avy-setup-default))

Relevant links:

• Avy: https://github.com/abo-abo/avy
• Video series overview page:
  • http://cestlaz.github.io/stories/emacs
• Code for this video
  • https://github.com/zamansky/using-emacs/tree/lesson-7-avy
• Complete code built up over all videos:
  • https://github.com/zamansky/using-emacs/tree/master