A common complaint about Emacs is that it takes longer to launch than Vim. With Spacemacs and many plugins, it takes 10-20 seconds to launch. With daemon mode, it launches in less than a second.

How it works

Instead of launching a full Emacs instance every time, run Emacs as a daemon in headless mode when your computer starts. Then connect to it using the emacsclient command.

Commands:

emacsclient - terminal client, launches as fast as Vim
emacsclient -c - opens a separate GUI instance

Setting up the daemon

Use macOS Launch Agents to start an Emacs daemon on login and restart it if it dies.

Create the plist file

Create ~/Library/LaunchAgents/gnu.emacs.daemon.plist:

xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>gnu.emacs.daemon</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/bin/emacs</string>
    <string>--daemon</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>ServiceDescription</key>
  <string>Gnu Emacs Daemon</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Load the daemon

Start the daemon and ensure it starts on every login:

bash

launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/gnu.emacs.daemon.plist

Unload the daemon

Stop the daemon and prevent it from starting on next login: