"I started Neomacs because I love Emacs, I respect Emacs, and I want to evolve the legendary Emacs into the ultimate modern powerhouse." — Eval Exec
✨ "While other editors can save your files, only Emacs can save your soul." ✨
Emacs, rewritten in Rust — unleashed on the GPU, fixing what 40 years of C never could.
Built for 100% compatibility with the Emacs ecosystem you already have — your config, your packages, your muscle memory.
Install · Showcase · Animations · Architecture · FAQ · Discussions
NEO Emacs keeps everything that makes Emacs Emacs — your init.el, your packages, your
muscle memory — and rebuilds the machinery underneath: the display engine runs on the
GPU, and the ~300,000-line C core is reimplemented in Rust. GNU Emacs itself serves as
the test oracle, so every rewritten subsystem is verified to behave identically.
(Why rewrite Emacs?)
Important
NEO Emacs is a work in progress. Expect rough edges, breaking changes, and missing features — bug reports are very welcome.
Note
NEO Emacs is a hard fork of GNU Emacs (Lisp tree synced to emacs-31.1). The C core
has been fully replaced by Rust. Fork provenance and rationale: FAQ.
Watch more demos and development updates on
Cursor, buffer-switch, and scroll animations — GPU-rendered at display refresh rate:
2026-02-07_16-49-54.mp4
More: 4K video, inline browser, inline terminal, rounded box faces…
2026-02-07_16-36-47.mp4
- GPU display engine — text, images, and effects rendered via wgpu
(Vulkan · Metal · DX12 · GL); ~4,000 lines of Rust replace ~50,000 lines of
xdisp.c - Rich media in buffers — inline 4K video (typed Rust GStreamer + VA-API integration on Linux), GPU-decoded images, a WPE WebKit browser, and a GPU terminal; DMA-BUF paths stay on the GPU, with typed fallbacks where native interop is unavailable
- Animations everywhere — 8 cursor modes, 21 scroll effects, 10 buffer transitions at display refresh rate, all configurable from Elisp (full catalog)
- Hackable below the Lisp line — in GNU Emacs, hackability ends where the C display engine begins; NEO Emacs opens the whole frontend to Elisp, from render effects down to GPU shaders (WGSL) — hack the pixels, not just the text
- Compatibility as the contract — your
init.el, packages, and muscle memory; every rewritten subsystem is diffed against GNU Emacs as a test oracle, and real-world configs like Doom Emacs are the daily test bed - Pure-Rust core — no C left: the Elisp evaluator, bytecode VM, GC, portable dump, and editor internals are all memory-safe, modern Rust
- GUI or terminal — the same binary renders on the GPU or in a TTY (
neomacs -nw) - What's next — true multi-threaded Elisp and a concurrent zero-pause GC (status)
Prefer system packages? Download them from Releases:
| Platform | Packages |
|---|---|
| Linux | .deb · .rpm · tarball · AppImage (x86_64, aarch64) |
| macOS (experimental) | .dmg · .zip · .tar.gz (Apple Silicon) |
| Windows (experimental) | installer .exe · portable .zip (x86_64, aarch64) |
On Windows, launch runneomacs.exe for the GUI without a console window.
Installer shortcuts use this launcher. Use neomacs.exe from a terminal for
-nw, --batch, redirected output, and shell exit status.
For terminal, batch, and Linux container deployments, the complete application
is also published for amd64 and arm64 on
evalexec/neomacs and
ghcr.io/eval-exec/neomacs.
See the Docker guide.
The Linux product links the system GStreamer runtime and provides video. Every
Linux artifact carries it: the .deb and .rpm declare the dependency, and the
AppImage bundles that closure, though codec plugin families still come from the
host.
The .rpm is built inside an el9 container, so it installs on RHEL 9, Rocky,
Alma and Fedora 43+ — a package built on Ubuntu cannot, because rpmbuild
records the build host's ncurses and glibc symbol versions as requirements. See
releasing-linux.md.
Build from source
git clone https://github.com/eval-exec/neomacs && cd neomacs
# Optional (recommended): repo dev shell with all dependencies
nix develop --accept-flake-config
# Compiles Rust, bootstraps Elisp, generates the portable dump
cargo xtask fresh-build --release
./target/release/neomacsRun Cargo commands from within the checkout (normally its root). Cargo discovers
.cargo/config.toml from the invocation directory; Neomacs uses that config to
provide member crates with the repository root for shared Lisp and test assets.
Platform dependencies (Arch, macOS, Nix/Cachix) and the test suites: docs/building.md.
| Area | State |
|---|---|
| 100% GNU Emacs compatibility (oracle test suites) | 🚧 ~95%, closing the last gaps |
| JIT compilation + inline caching for Elisp | 🚧 working, profiling and improving |
| zero pause GC | 🚧 maturing |
| Elisp-hackable frontend — GPU shaders, surfaces | 🚧 early, expanding |
| Rust Elisp runtime — evaluator, bytecode VM, portable dump | 🚧 refactoring, testing, improving |
GPU display + layout engine (replaces xdisp.c) |
🚧 early, improving |
| Inline images, 4K video, WebKit browser | 🚧 works today, experimental, improving |
| High-performance neo-term (GPU terminal) | 🚧 in development |
| Cursor / scroll / buffer-switch animations | 🚧 polishing, catalog growing |
| Performance | 🔬 profiling, benchmarking, tuning |
| True multi-threaded Elisp | 🔬 designing, researching, experimental attempts |
TUI renderer (neomacs -nw) |
🚧 usable, polishing |
| Cross-platform support | 🚧 Linux & macOS first; Windows awaiting testing; WASM, Android & iOS planned |
Everything runs in Rust across two threads — the Emacs thread owns the Elisp runtime and editor state, the render thread owns the GPU.
Design principles, the full module map, and why Rust/wgpu: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.
❤️ Sponsoring ❤️
NEO Emacs is a long-term project that takes significant ongoing work to build, test, and maintain. If NEO Emacs is useful or exciting to you, please consider supporting its development on:
- ❤️ GitHub Sponsors ❤️ -- recommand
- 🪙 Crypto donations are also welcome — scan a QR code or copy an address:
| BTC (Bitcoin) | Ethereum — ETH · USDC · any ERC-20 |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| bc1p0y3fzffqrqw08k8nc2ge3dfj02hr22ku8nugnc04ek522gty9kjsyy8lgc | 0xF5e8493b611F8D4c07850C2cC77b38dD632620F2 |
Built with wgpu · winit · cosmic-text — cursor animations inspired by Neovide.
GNU General Public License v3.0 (same as Emacs)