NonGNU ELPA - casual

Casual is a project to re-imagine the primary user interface for Emacs using keyboard-driven menus.

Emacs has many commands that are easy to forget if not used frequently. Menus are a user interface (UI) affordance that offers discoverability and recognition. While menus are commonly associated with mouse-driven UI, the inclusion of Transient in Emacs core allows for building menus that are keyboard-driven instead. This appeals to users that prefer keyboard-driven workflows.

Casual organizes itself primarily around the different built-in modes Emacs provides. For each mode Casual supports, there is a bespoke designed library of Transient menus for that mode's command set.

Casual has no aims to be a mutually exclusive user interface. All existing user interfaces to commands (keybinding, mini-buffer prompt, mouse menus) are still available to the user.

To learn more about the motivations and design considerations for Casual as well as seeing it at work, please watch the presentation “Re-imagining the Emacs User Experience with Casual Suite” from EmacsConf 2024.

Please refer to the Casual User Guide for detailed information about it. This user guide is available both in Emacs Info and HTML formats.

Casual requires Emacs 29.1+, Transient 0.9.0+, csv-mode 1.27+.

Certain menus require more installed software:

• Casual Dired: GNU Coreutils
• Casual Image: ImageMagick 6+

In Emacs, a “mode” is analogous to an “app” in that it is a grouping of related features. Installation of Casual is done on a per-mode basis.

Installation instructions for the different modes supported by Casual can be found in the Casual User Guide.

As Casual is new, we are looking for early adopters! Your feedback is welcome as it will likely impact Casual's evolution, particularly with regards to UI.

For users who wish to help contribute to Casual or personally customize it for their own usage, please read the .

It costs money to make, enhance, and maintain Casual as ideologically free software. If you enjoy using Casual, please buy me a coffee to help support its development and maintenance.

While the package casual focuses on user interfaces for built-in Emacs modes, there are other third party packages which receive the “Casual” treatment. Two such packages are:

• Casual Avy (Elisp package: casual-avy)
  • An interface for the highly capable Avy navigation package.
• Casual Symbol Overlay (Elisp package: casual-symbol-overlay)
  • An interface for the Symbol Overlay package.

Users interested in getting all current and future Casual interfaces for both built-in and third party packages should install Casual Suite, which includes all of the above packages including casual.

A heartfelt thanks to all the contributors to Transient, Magit, Org Mode, and Emacs. This package would not be possible without your efforts.

© 2024-2026 Charles Y. Choi