A meta question about meta keys question

A few days ago I asked this question: [**https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/wa73du/i\_am\_unable\_to\_remap\_m1\_or\_m2\_to\_my\_shortcuts\_in/**](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/wa73du/i_am_unable_to_remap_m1_or_m2_to_my_shortcuts_in/) This question has been seen 1700 times and has a 100% upvote rate as you can see here: [https://i.imgur.com/pAdhWeQ.png](https://i.imgur.com/pAdhWeQ.png) , yet there is not a single answer (outside of my 1 comment asking people what do they need more to be able to help). My question to you is, what should I formulate differently, or what other information should I bring in so the question would attract at least 1 answer. Or, should I put more effort into titles? Do Emacs enthusiasts appreciate a witty titles like "A meta question about meta keys question" more than "Why doesn't my question about meta keys rebinding get any answers?" Do the feel that responding/helping/interacting with a person who puts effort into titles will be more enjoyable, worth spending their time than talking to somebody whose titles are "ordinary"? I shared this question on Spacemacs subredit as well, but only 2 guys who are even less experienced than me tried to help, but as I said, they didn't have any deep knowledge about Emacs at all, they were beginners as one of them admitted. Thank you in advance.

When asking for help with these sorts of thing you'll want to eliminate as many moving parts as possible. The best place to start is whether or not your problem is reproducible by launching emacs with the `-Q` option. This will prevent your init file and site lisp files from being loaded. If it's reproducible, it may be an Emacs bug or a quirk of your OS. If it is not, you have narrowed the search to your init file. The reason your probably didn't get many responses is because there probably aren't many people with the exact same set up as you. It has nothing to do with clever titles. It's good that you provided contextual information in your question, but it does not guarantee an answer.

Yep. i would certainly try to help if i had a similar system, or at least some experience with something like your setup, but i don't - it's been over a decade since i last used anything other than Linux or OpenBSD. (Apple hardware is way out of my price range, even if i wanted to use Apple stuff in general.)

You can try the emacs chat channel on [irc.libera.chat](https://irc.libera.chat) Don't be surprised if you also here get no or useless responds. Just try it again later.

Can you remap e.g. M-2 to something on Ubuntu/Arch/Fedora you are using? If you do something like (global-set-key (kbd "M-2") 'shell) Does it work? Are you able to invoke shell by pressing Meta (probably Alt on Linux) and 2?

i'm on Gentoo, with i3 as my WM, using stock Emacs 28 (i.e. not an Emacs distro). Evaluating the form you provided, then doing either `ESC 2` or `ALT 2`, starts a shell.

I remember that question, because it was one of the few posts that got me to put some time into investigating (with my config, with -Q, with different versions of emacs). But then I remembered that none of it mattered because I have M-1 etc globally bound in other software, and Emacs never even saw it. The title was fine. I just didn't have an answer for you. Yes, *maybe* I should've posted an answer anyway, but I didn't think it would be helpful. :-(

Can't help you on mac. I just tried in windows the line below and it works. By default isn't M with the number keys numeric arguments for repeating? Are you intentionally trying to drop that behavior? (local-set-key (kbd "M-2") 'move-end-of-line) The above code in my scratch buffer makes it so that M-2 or "alt-2" now acts as move to end of line instead of the default 'numeric argument'

M-2 will switch to window 2 if you have 2 windows, or to windows 3 if you have three, etc. At least on Mac.

Is this default mac behavior? (I use windows and Linux). If so you probably need to look up how to switch up that binding. On Linux I took the time to unbind almost everything the "windows" key did in Xwindows because I wanted it as my super key. I also setup my 'app' key as Hyper via XmodMap. And setup F13-F24 to properly register since my QMK keyboard lets me fire those keycodes too. Just trying to clarify since I'm not having any issues rebinding.

it would have been helpful. I use pop.com for screen sharing and i keep forgetting that it's stealing some of the keyboard shortcuts from my editors.

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