June 18, 2026
The editor glow-up nobody saw coming
Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving
Emacs fans are losing it as the old-school editor suddenly gets way easier
TLDR: Emacs 31, a new version of the long-running text editor, is adding built-in features that cut down the usual setup pain and make it easier to use out of the box. Fans are thrilled, cracking jokes about “slimming” their configs, while skeptics sparked the usual debate over whether people still use Emacs at all.
The big mood around Emacs 31 is basically: wait, the famously fussy old editor is becoming... convenient? The article is a victory lap from a longtime user who’s been test-driving the upcoming version and gleefully crossing hacks out of his setup because the program now does more on its own. The flashiest change is that language support and smarter text parsing are becoming much more automatic, which for normal humans translates to: less setup, fewer headaches, more “it just works.” There’s also a new built-in mode for writing Markdown, plus a pile of small quality-of-life upgrades that made commenters sound like they were opening presents early.
And the comments? Pure geek joy with a side of identity crisis. One person called the new auto-install feature “GLP1 for my .emacs!” — a diet-drug joke for a slimming config file, which is about as internet-nerd as it gets. Another sounded genuinely stunned that so many long-wished-for features were arriving at once: “Some dreams do come true!” But the hottest recurring subplot was the eternal outsider jab: “Is anyone still using emacs?” That immediately got a proud clapback from a loyalist who briefly defected to Visual Studio Code for better AI help, then came running back once Emacs caught up. The deeper drama is simple: fans love that Emacs is getting more beginner-friendly, but they’re also quietly admitting its old reputation for requiring endless tweaking was real. For a tool famous for making users work for love, this update has the community acting like they’ve been handed flowers.
Key Points
- •The article previews Emacs 31 features the author is already using from development builds on the emacs-31 branch and master.
- •Emacs 31 simplifies tree-sitter setup through built-in options such as `treesit-enabled-modes` and `treesit-auto-install-grammar`.
- •Grammar source definitions for languages including TypeScript, TSX, Rust, TOML, YAML, and Dockerfile are described as moving into the modes themselves.
- •The article credits Yuan Fu and other developers with ongoing improvements to tree-sitter support in Emacs.
- •Emacs 31 includes an experimental built-in `markdown-ts-mode`, which the author says began from their 2025 proposal and was later co-developed with Stéphane Marks.