In emacs, sometimes I will be in the middle of finding a file or switching buffers or doing something in the minibuffer, and I will click somewhere else for some reason. When I go back, the only way to make the minibuffer prompt active again is to click inside the minibuffer, which is annoying because it is a thin area. Is there any way to switch back to an active minibuffer prompt without using the mouse?
4 Answers
This will do what you want. Bind to the key of your choice:
(defun switch-to-minibuffer-window ()
"switch to minibuffer window (if active)"
(interactive)
(when (active-minibuffer-window)
(select-frame-set-input-focus (window-frame (active-minibuffer-window)))
(select-window (active-minibuffer-window))))
(global-set-key (kbd "<f7>") 'switch-to-minibuffer-window)
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2If you have multiple frames then you need to add
(select-frame-set-input-focus (window-frame (active-minibuffer-window)))
before theselect-window
. Jun 18, 2015 at 8:28 -
@dshepherd I can confirm that after inserting your Elisp line, the enriched function is working well with only one frame as well. Thanks. Dec 7, 2015 at 15:11
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C-x o
Repeat as necessary.
C-x o runs the command other-window, which is an interactive built-in function in `C source code'.
If you do not want to cycle through windows, you can add a function in your init file and bind it to a key. Something like this might work:
(defun select-minibuffer ()
"Make the active minibuffer the selected window."
(interactive)
(when (active-minibuffer-window)
(select-window (active-minibuffer-window))))
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1Why would you want to include
RET
like that? It would automatically accept whatever was in the minibuffer (assuming a singleC-x o
switched to the minibuffer). Generally, one may need to useC-x o
multiple times if there are (in Emacs parlance) multiple windows open in the frame (in normal GUI terms: multiple panes in the window). Apr 18, 2010 at 19:39 -
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Is there any way to get directly to the minibuffer without potentially cycling through all windows? Should I just write a loop that does
other-window
until current window is minibuffer? Apr 18, 2010 at 21:29
Another option is using switch-window
I find it to be a really useful package: it allows you to quickly move to any Emacs window, visually (and I do use a lot of open windows in Emacs).
But I just find out it also allows you to move to the minibuffer, if it is active:
Hope it helps.
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1A related package is
swap-buffers
which uses the same method for swapping the current buffer with that in another window. May 16, 2015 at 16:57
;; faster switching between windows in the same frame
(windmove-default-keybindings)
Adding two above lines of code to .emacs.el will enable simple and efficient moving, not just to minibuffer, but also navigating all other windows on Emacs frame using Shift-Arrow.