bbatsov/crux

crux

A Collection of Ridiculously Useful eXtensions for Emacs. crux bundles many useful interactive commands to enhance your overall Emacs experience.

Most of the crux commands are related to the editing experience, but there are also a bunch of utility commands that are just very useful to have (e.g. crux-open-with and crux-reopen-as-root).

Origins of crux

Many of the functions in crux started life as blog posts on Emacs Redux, then were included in Emacs Prelude, before finally being extracted to crux. You can see a full list of blog posts on functions in crux on the tags page.

Installation

Available on all major package.el community maintained repos - MELPA Stable and MELPA repos.

MELPA Stable is recommended as it has the latest stable version. MELPA has a development snapshot for users who don't mind breakage but don't want to run from a git checkout.

You can install crux using the following command:

M-x package-install [RET] crux [RET]

If the installation doesn't work try refreshing the package list:

M-x package-refresh-contents

Alternatively, you can add the following code to your Emacs config:

(unless (package-installed-p 'crux)
  (package-refresh-contents)
  (package-install 'crux))

Keybindings

crux doesn't setup any keybindings for its commands out-of-the-box. There are several reasons for this:

• Most users probably won't need all the commands, so it'd be an overkill to define a minor mode consuming a lot of valuable keybindings
• Many of the optimal keybindings are in the user space anyways (e.g. C-c some-letter)
• Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to keybindings

Here's the list of some suggested keybindings. Feel free to bind individual commands to whatever keybindings you prefer.

Here's how you'd bind some of the commands to keycombos:

(global-set-key [remap move-beginning-of-line] #'crux-move-beginning-of-line)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c o") #'crux-open-with)
(global-set-key [(shift return)] #'crux-smart-open-line)
(global-set-key (kbd "s-r") #'crux-recentf-find-file)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-<backspace>") #'crux-kill-line-backwards)
(global-set-key [remap kill-whole-line] #'crux-kill-whole-line)
(global-set-key [remap keyboard-quit] #'crux-keyboard-quit-dwim)

For crux-ispell-word-then-abbrev to be most effective you'll also need to add this to your config:

(setq save-abbrevs 'silently)
(setq-default abbrev-mode t)

Using the bundled advices

crux ships with some handy advice that can enhance the operation of existing commands.

(crux-with-region-or-buffer)

You can use crux-with-region-or-buffer to make a command acting normally on a region to operate on the entire buffer in the absence of a region. Here are a few examples you can stuff in your config:

(crux-with-region-or-buffer indent-region)
(crux-with-region-or-buffer untabify)

(crux-with-region-or-line)

Likewise, you can use crux-with-region-or-line to make a command alternately act on the current line if the mark is not active:

(crux-with-region-or-line comment-or-uncomment-region)

(crux-with-region-or-sexp-or-line)

Similarly, crux-with-region-or-sexp-or-line makes a command that acts on the active region, or else the current list (or string), or finally the current line:

(crux-with-region-or-sexp-or-line kill-region)

(crux-with-region-or-point-to-eol)

Sometimes you might want to act on the point until the end of the current line, rather than the whole line, in the absence of a region:

(crux-with-region-or-point-to-eol kill-ring-save)

Minor modes

(crux-reopen-as-root-mode)

Crux provides a crux-reopen-as-root command for reopening a file as root. This global minor mode changes find-file so all root files are automatically opened as root.

License

Copyright © 2015-2025 Bozhidar Batsov and contributors.

Distributed under the GNU General Public License; type C-h C-c to view it.