Emacs is a highly customizable text editor that is popular among developers and power users for its extensibility and powerful features. It is an essential tool for many who work in programming, text editing, and data processing. While Emacs is not developed by Apple, it is fully compatible with macOS, and users can take advantage of its capabilities within the Apple ecosystem.

This article will guide you through the process of installing and using Emacs on macOS. We will cover the installation steps, basic usage, and customization to help you get started with Emacs on your Mac.

Examples:

1. Installing Emacs via Homebrew:

   Homebrew is a popular package manager for macOS that simplifies the installation of software. To install Emacs using Homebrew, follow these steps:

   • Open the Terminal application on your Mac.
   • Install Homebrew if you haven't already by running the following command:

     /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

   • Once Homebrew is installed, you can install Emacs with the following command:

     brew install emacs

   • After the installation is complete, you can launch Emacs by typing emacs in the Terminal.

2. Running Emacs:

   • To start Emacs in the Terminal, simply type:

     emacs

   • For a graphical version of Emacs, you can install Emacs with GUI support:

     brew install --cask emacs

   • After installation, you can find Emacs in your Applications folder and open it like any other macOS application.

3. Basic Usage:

   • Once Emacs is running, you can open a file by pressing Ctrl-x followed by Ctrl-f, then typing the file name and pressing Enter.
   • To save a file, press Ctrl-x followed by Ctrl-s.
   • To exit Emacs, press Ctrl-x followed by Ctrl-c.

4. Customization:

   Emacs is known for its customization capabilities. You can customize Emacs by editing the .emacs or init.el file located in your home directory. Here is an example of a simple customization to set the default font and theme:

   ;; Set default font
   (set-face-attribute 'default nil :font "Menlo-14")
   
   ;; Load a theme
   (load-theme 'wombat t)

   Save the above code in your .emacs or init.el file to apply the customizations.