One of the biggest advantages of Android is that it runs on Linux and Termux [1] is a very capable terminal emulator. Until pine phone (which I own for playing around on) type devices reach daily driver maturity (to use with job related corporate apps etc.) Termux is my only realistic option to run Linux terminal apps on the phone.

This is where being able to use Emacs as a TUI application on Termux is great. I actually run a slightly tweaked version of my desktop config which relies of doom-emacs [1]. I don’t do anything complex but the editing experience is as comfortable as most other phone app. The editing experience is helped by evil bindings which are more key-sequence driven rather than key-combo driven. Although modifier keys are supported by Termux and a two row soft keyboard is fully customizable, evil bindings are easier. My config for the softkeys is shown here:

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extra-keys = [ \
    ['ESC','|','/','HOME','UP','END','~','DEL'], \
    ['TAB','CTRL','ALT','LEFT','DOWN','RIGHT',':','<'] \
]

Also swiping over the soft keyboard reveals a text entry field which is a standard Android text field so text auto correct, gesture typing, and other keyboard features work as expected and is a lot more convenient for typing.

In fact this whole gemini capsule and all entries (so far) were created using Termux + Emacs including setting up the CI/CD for sr.ht.

While I use this setup for capturing notes in org mode, for tasks management I use Orgzly. That’s another topic but in an even smaller nutshell, the biggest benefit is system notifications.

[1] https://termux.com [2] https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs.