GNU Emacs text editor released new 30.1 version on Sunday with many new features.

Emacs is finally ported to Android operating system. Though, it requires to be compiled on another computer with Android NDK, SDK and Java compiler. See the “INSTALL” file under java sub-folder of the source for details.

The new release also improved touchscreen devices support. It now supports tapping tool-bar buttons and opening menus. And, countless packages (such as Dired and Custom) have been adjusted to better understand touch screen input.

Emacs 30.1 introduced new trusted-content option. It defines list of files and directories whose content that Emacs trusts. Meaning it might execute the code within those files and directories even without any explicit user request.

The release also introduced new which-key package, which implements the global minor mode which-key-mode that displays a table of key bindings upon entering a partial key chord and waiting for a moment.

The 30.1 release now has native JSON support without external libjansson library is required, and --with-json configure option has been removed as it no longer required. And, native compilation is enabled by default in the release, though user can disable it by using --with-native-compilation=no configure option.

On Linux, the emacsclient.desktop now arranges for Emacs to be default app for org-protocol. The ‘org-protocol’ links should now open in Emacs automatically without any configuration.

Other change include new tool-bar-position parameter to set tool bar to bottom, default to ossaudio for sound on NetBSD and OpenBSD, as well as following changes:

• New package Compat, EditorConfig, and Window-Tool-Bar.
• New configure option --disable-gc-mark-trace, gains 5% better garbage collection performance, but makes more difficult to find GC-related bugs.
• New library Track-Changes and PEG.
• New major mode ‘elixir-ts-mode’, ‘heex-ts-mode’, ‘html-ts-mode’, ‘lua-ts-mode’, and ‘php-ts-mode’.
• Support for styled underline face attributes.
• Support for underline colors on TTY frames.
• Support Unicode Standard v15.1.
• Modeline elements can be right-aligned.

There are as well numerous new options, commands, and improvements, see the NEWS page for details.

How to Get GNU Emacs 30.1

GNU Emacs has an official download page for Linux, BSDs, Haiku, Windows, and macOS support:

For Linux, besides building from the source tarball, user may choose the Snap package available in Ubuntu Software or App Center, or Flatpak package that runs in sandbox environment. However, both are not updated at the moment of writing.

For Ubuntu users who prefer the classic .deb package, I’ll backport the new release package into PPA (if possible) and update this how to install guide.