bbatsov/prelude

Emacs Prelude

Prelude is an Emacs distribution that aims to enhance the default Emacs experience. Prelude alters a lot of the default settings, bundles a plethora of additional packages and adds its own core library to the mix. The final product offers an easy to use Emacs configuration for Emacs newcomers and lots of additional power for Emacs power users.

Prelude is compatible ONLY with GNU Emacs 29.1+. In general you're advised to always run Prelude with the latest stable Emacs release.

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I've been developing and maintaining Prelude in my free time for well over a decade. That's a lot of work, and not all of it is fun!

Please consider supporting Prelude's ongoing development.

Features

• Improved UX, that's still in line with Emacs traditions
• Sane defaults of baseline Emacs functionality
• Automatic installation of many major programming modes on demand
• A curated set of 3rd party packages to enhance the base functionality
• Simple modular architecture
• Easy customization

Check out our user manual for more information.

Fast Forward

Assuming you're using an Unix-like OS (*BSD, GNU/Linux, macOS, Solaris, etc), you already have a recent version of Emacs installed, as well as git & curl you can skip the whole manual and just type in your favorite shell the following command:

curl -L https://git.io/epre | sh

You can now power up your Emacs, sit back and enjoy Prelude.

There are two environment variables you can use to control the source repository and the installation directory. To change the installation directory:

export PRELUDE_INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/.emacs.d" && \
  curl -L https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/raw/master/utils/installer.sh | sh

To change the source repository:

export PRELUDE_URL="https://github.com/yourname/prelude.git" && \
  curl -L https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/raw/master/utils/installer.sh | sh

Note that the installer will back up any existing .emacs file or .emacs.d since it will unpack Prelude's code in .emacs.d. If you're doing a manual install make sure you don't have a .emacs file or back up your existing .emacs.d directory manually.

Important: Don't forget to adjust your prelude-modules.el file in your personal directory once the installation is done. By default most of the modules that ship with Prelude are not loaded.

Try Before You "Buy"

If you're using Emacs 29+ there's a simple way to try Prelude (or any other Emacs distro for that matter). Just clone Prelude's repo somewhere and do the following:

emacs --init-dir ~/path/to/prelude

Philosophy

Prelude's philosophy is quite simple:

• simple
• easy to understand and extend
• stable
• a foundation for you to build upon, as opposed to some end-user product

This means that it intentionally doesn't pack all the bells and whistles that it could. Prelude aims to enhance the classic Emacs experience without deviating a lot from it - e.g. it would never enable something like evil-mode (vim keybindings) by default and so on.

All the third-party packages that it bundles are carefully vetted and are known to be of good quality and to have reliable maintainers. That generally means that Prelude's unlikely to immediate adopt some shiny new package, that has established tried and true alternatives.

In practice this translates to the following:

• Prelude is less opinionated than distros like Spacemacs and Doom Emacs (meaning it's closer to the standard Emacs experience)
• Prelude installs relatively few additional packages by default
• Most modules in Prelude are opt-in instead of opt-out (you'll notice the default config enables only a handful of modules)
• Most modules (e.g. modules for programming languages) are pretty short and feature setup only for essential packages (in some cases that be just the major mode for the language in question)
• You don't really need to track Prelude's upstream - you're encouraged to just fork it and use it as the basis for your own configuration.

Remember that the ultimate goal of every Emacs user is to create an Emacs setup that reflects their own experience, needs, goals and ideas. Just like Lisp, Emacs is nothing but a raw building material for the perfect editing experience.

More installation options are discussed in the installation guide.

User Manual

While Emacs Prelude is pretty simple at its core, it does have some specifics that are worth learning - e.g. configuration options, load order of modules and personal settings and so on.

Check out our user manual for more information.

You can also find a lot of information about specific Prelude features and the rationale behind them on my Emacs blog Emacs Redux.

crux and super-save

A lot of utility commands that used to be part of Prelude were eventually extracted to the crux package, so they'd be easily available to more people. These days Prelude simply depends on that package.

The super-save package also used to be part of Prelude in the past.

Upgrading to Prelude 2.0

Prelude 2.0 is a major release that modernizes the entire distribution around Emacs 29+ features. Here's what you need to know:

Emacs 29.1 is now required

Prelude no longer supports Emacs 28 or older. If you haven't upgraded yet, now's the time. Emacs 29 brings built-in tree-sitter, Eglot (LSP client), use-package, and many other improvements that Prelude 2.0 takes full advantage of.

Tree-sitter support

For built-in modes that ship both classic and tree-sitter variants (e.g., python-mode / python-ts-mode), Prelude automatically selects the tree-sitter version when a grammar is available and falls back to the classic mode when it isn't. Some modules use tree-sitter modes unconditionally (e.g., prelude-ocaml uses neocaml which is tree-sitter-only), though such modes typically auto-install their grammars.

To install tree-sitter grammars, use M-x treesit-install-language-grammar. See the Emacs manual for details.

Built-in LSP via Eglot

Prelude 2.0 adds LSP support to most language modules using Eglot (built-in since Emacs 29) as the default client. If you were previously using prelude-lsp with lsp-mode, note that:

• The module has been renamed to prelude-lsp-mode.
• Set (setq prelude-lsp-client 'lsp-mode) in your personal config to keep using lsp-mode.
• The default is now Eglot -- no extra packages needed.
• Eglot keybindings live under C-c C-l (rename, code actions, format, etc.).

Removed packages and modules

Several outdated packages have been replaced by built-in alternatives:

Keybinding changes

• C-x p no longer opens proced (reserved for project.el).
• C-x C-m runs execute-extended-command instead of smex.
• C-c c is bound to org-capture.
• C-c C-l prefix is used for Eglot commands in programming modes.

What you should do

1. Update Emacs to 29.1 or newer.
2. Pull the latest Prelude and restart Emacs. Packages will be updated automatically.
3. Review your prelude-modules.el -- if you had prelude-lsp enabled, rename it to prelude-lsp-mode. If you want Eglot (recommended), you don't need any LSP module enabled.
4. Install tree-sitter grammars for your languages of choice (optional but recommended).
5. Check your personal config for references to removed packages (nlinum, anzu, epl, anaconda-mode, js2-mode, tide, alchemist).

Known issues

Check out the project's issue list a list of unresolved issues. By the way - feel free to fix any of them and send me a pull request. :-)

Funding

While Prelude is free software and will always be, the project would benefit immensely from some funding. If Prelude improves your daily Emacs experience, please consider supporting its ongoing development.

You can support the development of Prelude via:

• GitHub Sponsors
• Patreon
• ko-fi
• PayPal

Support

Support is available via several channels:

• Prelude's Google Group [email protected]
• GitHub Discussions

Contributors

Here's a list of all the people who have contributed to the development of Emacs Prelude.

Bugs & Improvements

Bug reports and suggestions for improvements are always welcome. GitHub pull requests are even better! :-)

License

Copyright © 2011-2026 Bozhidar Batsov and contributors.

Distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 3