There was a big discussion on lobste.rs about people's favourite Emacs packages and that sparked similar conversations on Reddit and HN. Discussions like that are a great source of inspiration. I added a couple of small improvements to my config based on this week's Emacs news, like diff-hl.

Also, lots of people expressed their appreciation for Chris Wellons, who is moving on to other editors for now. Me, I've enjoyed using simple-httpd, impatient, and skewer, and I'm glad Chris made and shared them. Many of his packages already have new maintainers, and the rest are up for adoption. Perhaps we'll see him around again someday!

• Help wanted:
  • Join Org mode contributor liaison team and help maintaining Org mode
  • Skeeto: "I have officially retired from Emacs" – looking for maintainers for Elfeed etc. (Reddit, HN, lobste.rs)
• Upcoming events (iCal file, Org):
  • Emacs Berlin: Emacs-Berlin Hybrid Meetup https://emacs-berlin.org/ Wed Apr 29 1000 America/Vancouver - 1200 America/Chicago - 1300 America/Toronto - 1700 Etc/GMT - 1900 Europe/Berlin - 2230 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Apr 30 0100 Asia/Singapore
  • M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Fri May 1 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1500 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2030 Asia/Kolkata - 2300 Asia/Singapore
  • Emacs.si (in person): Emacs.si meetup #5 2026 (v #živo) https://dogodki.kompot.si/events/b4192df7-3da4-41b8-95a3-532b93923656 Mon May 4 1900 CET
  • EmacsATX: Emacs Social https://www.meetup.com/emacsatx/events/314341747/ Thu May 7 1600 America/Vancouver - 1800 America/Chicago - 1900 America/Toronto - 2300 Etc/GMT – Fri May 8 0100 Europe/Berlin - 0430 Asia/Kolkata - 0700 Asia/Singapore
  • Atelier Emacs Montpellier (in person) https://lebib.org/date/atelier-emacs Fri May 8 1800 Europe/Paris
  • Other stuff:
    • Sacha Chua: April 30 Yay Emacs: Sacha and Prot Talk Emacs - Newbies/Starter Kits (Prot)
    • Battle of the Editors - Satellite Event - Tue Jun 30 4:30 PM Aachen, Seffenterweg 23 / Kopernikusstr. 6 (IT Center) for hackathon participants and guests
    • Sacha Chua: May 4: Emacs Chat with Amin Bandali
      • May 7: Shae Erisson
      • May 21: Raymond Zeitler
      • June 18: Ross A. Baker
• Emacs configuration:
  • What are your favorite Emacs packages? (Reddit, HN)
• Emacs Lisp:
  • What are some common code smells that inexperienced Elispers make?
  • Dave Pearson: expando.el v1.6 - expand macro in a different window; fix keybinding
  • Protesilaos: Emacs livestream: Maintaining Denote, TMR, and more (YouTube 3:06:05)
  • Ideas for things to bind to C-z (@oantolin@mathstodon.xyz)
• Appearance:
  • Emacs Configuration: Writing my own Theme Switcher (15:33)
  • yotsuba: 4chan aesthetic, this time based on the Tomorrow theme. (Reddit)
• Navigation:
  • Dave Pearson: itch.el v1.3.0 - switch to the scratch buffer
  • Tip: repeat-map and expreg-expand (@plantarum@ottawa.place)
  • The Definitive Guide to Code Folding in Emacs (Reddit, Irreal)
• Writing:
  • Dave Pearson: blogmore.el v4.2 - cycle image extensions
  • Dave Pearson: kbdify.el v1.0.0 - marking up keys in Markdown
• Denote:
  • New package: denote-wordcloud
• Org Mode:
  • (emacs) org mode - your life in plain text (09:49)
  • Spacemacs | Org-contacts Agenda Anniversaires | Productivité (02:22)
  • How I use org-roam - The Universe of Joshua Blais
  • Spacemacs | Org-roam Notes avec tags | Productivité (00:59)
  • Import, export, and integration:
    • Quick tutorial to get a blog online from Org mode thanks to Org Social | Andros Fenollosa (@andros@activity.andros.dev, in Spanish, @hispaemacs@fosstodon.org)
    • Como colorear los bloques de código en Org-mode | Andros Fenollosa (2016, @hispaemacs@fosstodon.org)
    • Code for org-edit-special, eglot, and Python (@anoncheg@mastodontech.de)
    • Get ready for Orgy in 15 minutes — Bastien Guerry (Irreal, JC Helary) - static site generator
    • Tony Zorman: Writing Literate Blog Posts
• Completion:
  • Dave Pearson: unabbrev.el v1.0.0 - completing-read an abbrev
  • Charlie Holland: A VOMPECCC Case Study: Spotify as Pure ICR in Emacs (HN)
  • I made an Emacs completion style using nucleo, the fuzzy matcher from Helix (Reddit)
• Coding:
  • James Dyer: Highlighting git changes in a buffer with diff-hl
  • remoto.el: Browse GitHub repos without cloning. (Reddit, HN)
  • Exploring Semantic & Friends in Emacs for Development Without LSP - Dyne.org TV (@divyaranjan@tv.dyne.org)
  • Mike Olson: Fixing typescript-ts-mode in Emacs 30.2
• Math:
  • Emacs: ses-mode (Simple Emacs Spreadsheet) (20:57)
• Shells:
  • kitty-graphics.el v0.5.0: tmux support for images inside terminal Emacs and much more! (Reddit)
• Web:
  • Emacs is my browser - The Universe of Joshua Blais (Irreal, lobste.rs)
• Multimedia:
  • Some code for working with playlists and mpc (mpd) (@ablatedsprocket@hachyderm.io)
  • Spacemacs | Play music, recordings | Productivity (01:28)
  • Sam Aaron uses #emacs ! (01:27)
• AI:
  • claude-code-context - simple Emacs Buffer Awareness for Claude Code (Reddit)
  • AI For Boomers: Project Claude For Emacs (01:49)
• Community:
  • Fortnightly Tips, Tricks, and Questions — 2026-04-21 / week 16
  • Your sources for inspiration
  • Sacha Chua: YE20 braindump: Emacs Carnival: Newbies/starter kits (YouTube, 1:03:50)
    • Sacha Chua: YE21 April 23: Continuing to think about newbies / starter kits (YouTube, 1:00:51)
  • Randy Ridenour: Emacs and the Sunk Cost Fallacy
  • Emacs Philosophy and Infinite Depth with Protesilaos - The Universe of Joshua Blais (YouTube, 1:40:55)
  • A month of Elisp · Perpetually Curious Blog
• Other:
  • I made a TaskJuggler major mode for Emacs (Reddit)
  • Charles Choi: Some nice to know keybindings when using the mouse in Emacs (Irreal)
  • Marcin Borkowski: How I use my numeric keypad with Emacs Ledger mode
  • anju v1.2: center and fill menus, edit - duplicate, look up; improve mouse interactions in Emacs (@kickingvegas@sfba.social)
  • Rahul Juliato: Getting Emacs proced.el to Show CPU and Memory on macOS (Reddit)
• Emacs development:
  • Re: About "prefixed-core" - Philip Kaludercic
  • Add treesit-query-with-fallback
  • New user option compilation-search-extra-path
  • ; * etc/NEWS: Announce "setrgbf" and "setrgbb" terminfo capabilities
  • Add language-environment and input methods for Syriac
  • Rebind 'tab-bar-mouse-close-tab' from <down-mouse-2> to <mouse-2>
  • Show executed tests from erts files via the ERT results buffer
• New packages:
  • denote-wordcloud: Generate a word cloud (MELPA)
  • dmsg: Timestamped debug messages with backtrace support (GNU ELPA)
  • evil-ghostel: Evil-mode integration for ghostel (MELPA)
  • mozc-modeless: Modeless Japanese input with Mozc (MELPA)
  • org-lark: Export Lark docs to Org (MELPA)
  • verdict: Generic test runner with treemacs results UI (MELPA)
  • with-command-redo: Repeat commands with automatic undo (MELPA)

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, r/orgmode, r/spacemacs, Mastodon #emacs, Bluesky #emacs, Hacker News, lobste.rs, programming.dev, lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, planet.emacslife.com, YouTube, the Emacs NEWS file, Emacs Calendar, and emacs-devel. Thanks to Andrés Ramírez for emacs-devel links. Do you have an Emacs-related link or announcement? Please e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com. Thank you!