Emacs on Android - Emacs for the next 40 years
Greg Silverstein (he/him) - https://gsilvers.github.io/me/
The following image shows where the talk is in the schedule for Sun 2026-12-13. Solid lines show talks with Q&A via BigBlueButton. Dashed lines show talks with Q&A via IRC or Etherpad.
Format: 10-min talk ; Q&A: BigBlueButton conference room https://media.emacsconf.org/2026/current/bbb-android.html
Etherpad: https://pad.emacsconf.org/2026-android
Discuss on IRC: #emacsconf
Status: Waiting for video from speaker
Sunday, Dec 13 2026, ~2:05 PM - 2:15 PM MST (US/Mountain)
Sunday, Dec 13 2026, ~1:05 PM - 1:15 PM PST (US/Pacific)
Sunday, Dec 13 2026, ~9:05 PM - 9:15 PM UTC
Sunday, Dec 13 2026, ~10:05 PM - 10:15 PM CET (Europe/Paris)
Sunday, Dec 13 2026, ~11:05 PM - 11:15 PM EET (Europe/Athens)
Monday, Dec 14 2026, ~2:35 AM - 2:45 AM IST (Asia/Kolkata)
Monday, Dec 14 2026, ~5:05 AM - 5:15 AM +08 (Asia/Singapore)
Monday, Dec 14 2026, ~6:05 AM - 6:15 AM JST (Asia/Tokyo)
Description
I consider Emacs' most important feature in the past few years the official Android builds of Emacs.
Software engineers are often more aligned with the free as in speech version of free software and less about the free as in beer. We are lucky and work in a well compensated field. Pressures of ai and regimes are pushing the price of computing up and many people may only have a smart phone in the future. Many already do in the developing world. In the developed world price pressure may push to poor from desktops and laptops as datacenters eat up the silicon. We need to make sure Emacs meets its future users where they are to have it last the nest 40 years. Being where the users are is what gave us the vibrant ecosystem we have today.
In 2026 we also are learning that being sedentary at a computer is not great for health. Having real computing on the go is more important than ever.
I will demonstrate Emacs on mobile and its quirks as a user and make a plea to the community to focus on and help improve this valuable feature in the next years. I would like to cover
- Emacs and android installation
- Coziness and fonts
- Some use cases
- Advocate that people use and contribute to the community
About the speaker:
My name is Greg Silverstein. While not a regular Emacs contributor nor a very active community member, I have been a user of Emacs on and off for 20 years or so, and very heavily for the last five.
Questions or comments? Please e-mail emacsconf-org-private@gnu.org