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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T23:40:46+00:00

I’m using a Macbook Pro (Snow Leopard, 10.6.8) and have been a regular emacs

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I’m using a Macbook Pro (Snow Leopard, 10.6.8) and have been a regular emacs user for the past few months. I’m trying to install a modified version of Emacs 24.2 provided here to utilize Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) from the downloads page. I currently have 22.1.1:

M-x emacs-version
GNU Emacs 22.1.1 (mac-apple-darwin) of 2011-06-07 on b1030.apple.com

I installed the emacs linked earlier, put it in Applications, and set this in .bashrc:

alias emacs="/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs -nw"

So it seems like it’s working correctly as I wrote and successfully ran a short R program. 

M-x emacs-version
GNU Emacs 24.2.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin, NS apple-appkit-1038.36) of 2012-08-27 on bob.porkrind.org

Is this the usual way to upgrade to a “newer version” of Emacs? Sorry if this question seems trivial, but I’ve never done this before (I typically used emacs on a different computer) and the Installation step on the previous website consists of just one sentence. The all-in-one installation method also isn’t explained in the official documentation.

A brief side note while I was searching on the web: I believe calling ’emacs file_name’ should open a GUI version, while ’emacs -nw file_name’ is the console, so I remain using the terminal. But on my Mac, using emacs has the same effect as using emacs -nw. In other words, I can’t get a GUI or separate window to show up. Can anyone confirm that this Super User question has the ‘correct’ answer? (I don’t really have a problem with this, as I hate having another pop-up window, but it would be nice to know for completeness.)

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The Emacs that comes with Mac OS X /usr/bin/emacs does not have a graphical interface, just the terminal one, so calling emacs is the same as emacs -nw.

    Your upgraded Emacs by default starts with the graphical interface, so you need to specify -nw to force it to use the terminal.

    There is no “usual” way to upgrade OS X’s default Emacs (i.e. Apple does not provide an upgraded Emacs); what you’ve done is fine. Or you could install a binary from http://emacsformacosx.com/ or use a package manager like homebrew.

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