What emacs to install on Macbook Air 2017, MacOS 11.6? I'm completely new to MacOS and emacs. Want to learn emacs+orgmode.

Probably just easiest to install and use and learn, not necessarily my forever distro. I come from the windows world if that means anything.

I'm a fan of using vanilla emacs (less to be confused about if something breaks as a beginner!) — and since you're on OSX, I personally think the [railwaycat](https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport) fork will make things a bit nicer.

https://emacsformacosx.com/

+1 for railwaycat HomeBrew formula for Yamamoto Mituharu port - it has pixel-precise scrolling and overall better integrates into MacOS. As someone who just rediscovered Emacs a couple of months ago (I tried to use it ~20 years ago, but didn’t like it), it was useful to start with vanilla install, go through the tutorial to learn basics and then install Doom Emacs to see what else it can do. I’m not a Vim user, so I turned off Evil mode in Doom and used it with original keybindings. Doom was a nice experience, but after I discovered a bug specific to my setup (using synced org directory on iCloud Drive between two Macs), I used it as an excuse to build my own Emacs config from scratch.

Can you give me some advantages over some of the others? Perhaps comparing to some of the others also mentioned in this thread (so far railwaycat), or just generally from your experience why this would be good for my use case?

Well, the first advantage is that it's easy to install: drag the app bundle to the application folder and you're done, just like other Mac apps, and no need to setup other environments. Also, it's basically the vanilla build, so no unnecessary clusters. See also their tips page for more info: https://emacsformacosx.com/tips EDIT: forgot to mention that it also ships an older version of orgmode so it's good enough for learning purposes. And if you need newer versions or other extensions, the official packages.el can be used.

`brew install emacs-mac --with-rsvg --with-natural-title-bar --with-starter --with-mac-metal --with-glib --with-imagemagick`

Thanks!

Ok so I looked this up. brew > Homebrew (brew) is a free and open-source package manager that allows installing apps and software in macOS, Not installed on my machine. Supposing I do install homebrew, I suppose "emacs-mac" is the name of one of the emacs distributions? If so, which one? (So for example how is this different from "brew install emacs"?) And what do the flags mean? And like I asked the other person, why do you think this would be good for my use case? Either by your own experience or in comparison with other distributions?

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Homebrew is a handy way to install a lot of software on the Mac. There are other options like macports but personally homebrew all the way!

The emacs mac port by Yamamoto Mituharu as mentioned by other people have some macOS specific features like support for Retina display, SVG etc. and you can read more [here](https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/src/master/README-mac). I switched from https://emacsformacosx.com/ years ago and I'm happy with it. And I think it has by far the best user experience on macOS (at least for me) for daily use. If you need the very latest develop version of emacs (Emacs 29), you may try `brew install emacs-plus`. If you just want to play around or learn, https://emacsformacosx.com/ is fine enough and it is simplest one to install. BTW, you can use `brew info emacs-mac/emacs-plus` to see the available install options.

I've had good luck with emacs-plus from Homebrew. I personally have not had a good experience with emacs 27, and this lets you install 28, which is much smoother and more stable imo. Also you can install it with native compilation which is cool too.

I always compile it from source. I wrote a blog post about emacs on macos a while ago, a bit outdated, but may be a good starting point. [best Emacs built on macos ](https://blog.drshapeless.com/post/3)

I can highly recommend the system crafters series on [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEoMzSkcN8oPH1au7H6B7bBJ4ZO7BXjSZ). Emacs from Scratch tought me a lot, I am also new to Emacs. They/he have a few good episodes about configuring Org mode.

Jim's builds are pretty good, I think: [https://github.com/jimeh/emacs-builds](https://github.com/jimeh/emacs-builds) They're basic GNU Emacs, so the same version as the [emacsformacosx.com](https://emacsformacosx.com) builds.

Is Aquamacs still a thing? //Edit: I found this SO answer usefull: [What is the difference between Aquamacs and other Mac versions of Emacs?](https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/274/33705)

Probably too advanced for my use case, but thanks I might do something like this in the future.

It's still around and active, but as of right now its base is several major versions behind Emacs upstream. (v24 maybe? And because of this it won't compile as-is on Apple Silicon. You would have to use Rosetta.) They plan to bring it up to match, but it will certainly be a large effort and take a while. That said, it is a very nice project! Lots of effort to make it even more Mac-integrated than the Mac Port, and it shows!

Use the railwaycat port—trust me. Doom is great too—more stable than Spacemacs with better documentation and less bloat. If you have the time and patience to go vanilla then by all means do—but Doom may give you a better/faster appreciation of what emacs can do.

This was a useful read after all, thanks again.

Here's the build script that I use. It is pretty dead simple. [https://github.com/mclear-tools/build-emacs-macos](https://github.com/mclear-tools/build-emacs-macos)

Thanks!