consult.el - Consulting completing-read

This package provides various commands based on the Emacs completion function completing-read, in particular a more advanced buffer switching command consult-buffer and a Swiper-like search command consult-line.

The commands are compatible with completion-systems based on the standard Emacs API, e.g., the Emacs builtin Icomplete and Selectrum. If Icomplete is used, it is recommended to install Icomplete-vertical. The goal is to keep the completion-system specifics in this package to a minimum.

Note that there is the Marginalia package, which can be combined with Consult. The marginalia-mode enriches the completion display with annotations. The annotations show for example documentation strings or file information. Marginalia has been extracted from Embark and Consult since both packages provided minibuffer annotations. Embark provides local actions (like a context menu), which can be executed while selecting a candidate in the minibuffer. For example, when selecting a file, an action to delete the file is offered.

If you use Ivy or Helm, you probably don't need Consult, since both packages already bring their own rich set of additional commands.

Screenshots

consult-mark

consult-line

consult-outline

marginalia-mode

Available commands

Most provided commands follow the naming scheme consult-<thing>.

Virtual Buffers

• consult-buffer (-other-window, -other-frame): Enhanced version of switch-to-buffer with support for virtual buffers. Supports live preview and recursive editing while previewing. The command supports narrowing. You can type b SPC, f SPC, m SPC and v SPC in order to narrow to buffers, files, bookmarks and views respectively.
• consult-bookmark: Select or create bookmark. You might prefer the more powerful consult-buffer instead, which includes bookmarks.
• consult-recent-file (-other-window, -other-frame): Select a recent files. You might prefer the more powerful consult-buffer instead, which includes recent files.

Editing

• consult-register: Select from list of registers.
• consult-yank, consult-yank-pop: Enhanced version of yank and yank-pop which allows selecting from the kill-ring. Live preview is supported when selecting from the kill-ring.
• consult-kmacro: Select macro from the macro ring and execute it.

Help and Discoverability

• consult-apropos: Replacement for apropos with completion.

Note that there is the Marginalia package, which provides marginalia-mode. Enabling this mode annotates completions with richer information (e.g. M-x, describe-face, describe-symbol, helpful-function, …).

Histories

• consult-command-history: Select a command from the command-history.
• consult-history: Insert a string from the current buffer history. This command can be invoked from the minibuffer. In that case the history stored in the minibuffer-history-variable is used.

Navigation and Search

• consult-line (-symbol-at-point, -from-isearch): Select from matching lines. Supports live preview and recursive editing. There are two variants, which search for the symbol at point and for the most recent isearch string respectively.
• consult-mark: Jump to a marker in the mark-ring. Supports live preview and recursive editing.
• consult-outline: Jump to a heading of the outline. Supports live preview and recursive editing.
• consult-imenu: Jump to imenu item. Supports live preview, recursive editing and narrowing.
• consult-error: Jump to an error. Supports live preview and recursive editing. In contrast to consult-flycheck it shows the line and is more general since it is not tied to a specific backend.
• consult-flycheck: Jump to flycheck error. Supports live preview and recursive editing. The command supports narrowing. Press e SPC, w SPC, i SPC to only show errors, warnings and infos respectively. This command requires to install the additional consult-flycheck.el package since the main consult.el package only depends on Emacs core components.
• consult-flymake: Jump to Flymake diagnostic, like consult-flycheck.

Miscellaneous

• consult-file-externally: Select a file and open it externally, e.g. using xdg-open on Linux.
• consult-multi-occur: Replacement for multi-occur which uses completing-read-multiple.
• consult-completion-in-region: Function which can be used as completion-in-region-function. This way, the minibuffer completion UI will be used for completion-at-point. This function is particularily useful in combination with Icomplete-vertical, since Icomplete does not provide its own completion-in-region-function. In contrast, Selectrum already comes with its own function.
• consult-minor-mode-menu: Enable/disable minor mode.
• consult-theme: Select a theme and disable all currently enabled themes. Supports live preview of the theme while scrolling through the candidates.

Live previews

Some of the commands support live previews. For example when you scroll through the items of consult-line, the buffer will scroll to the corresponding position. It is possible to jump back and forth between the minibuffer and the buffer to perform recursive editing while the search is ongoing. Previews must be explicitly enabled via consult-preview-mode. Furthermore for each command, a customizable variable is offered to selectively enable/disable preview.

Narrowing to subsets

Consult has special support to narrow to candidate subsets. When you use the consult-buffer command, you can press b SPC and the list of candidates will be restricted such that only buffers are shown. If you press DEL afterwards, the full candidate list will be shown again. Furthermore a narrowing/widening key can be configured which can be pressed to achieve the same effect, ee the configuration variables consult-narrow-key and consult-widen-key.

Package configuration

It is recommended to manage package configurations with use-package. The Consult package only provides commands and does not add any keybindings. In order to use the enhanced commands, you must configure the keybindings yourself.

Note that there are three packages as of now: consult.el, consult-selectrum.el and consult-flycheck.el. Consult has been split such that the main package consult.el only depends on Emacs core components.

;; Example configuration for Consult
(use-package consult
  ;; Replace bindings. Lazily loaded due to use-package.
  :bind (("C-c h" . consult-history)
         ("C-c o" . consult-outline)
         ("C-x b" . consult-buffer)
         ("C-x 4 b" . consult-buffer-other-window)
         ("C-x 5 b" . consult-buffer-other-frame)
         ("C-x r x" . consult-register)
         ("C-x r b" . consult-bookmark)
         ("M-g o" . consult-outline) ;; "M-s o" is a good alternative
         ("M-g m" . consult-mark)    ;; "M-s m" is a good alternative
         ("M-g l" . consult-line)    ;; "M-s l" is a good alternative
         ("M-g i" . consult-imenu)   ;; "M-s i" is a good alternative
         ("M-g e" . consult-error)   ;; "M-s e" is a good alternative
         ("M-s m" . consult-multi-occur)
         ("M-y" . consult-yank-pop)
         ("<help> a" . consult-apropos))

  ;; The :init configuration is always executed (Not lazy!)
  :init

  ;; Replace functions (consult-multi-occur is a drop-in replacement)
  (fset 'multi-occur #'consult-multi-occur)

  ;; Configure other variables and modes in the :config section, after lazily loading the package
  :config

  ;; Optionally configure narrowing and widening keys.
  ;; Both < and C-+ work reasonably well.
  ;; (setq consult-narrow-key "<"
  ;;       consult-widen-key "< ")
  ;; (setq consult-narrow-key (kbd "C-+")
  ;;       consult-widen-key (kbd "C-+ SPC"))

  ;; Optional configure a "view" library to be used by `consult-buffer`.
  ;; The view library must provide two functions, one to open the view by name,
  ;; and one function which must return a list of views as strings.
  ;; Example: https://github.com/minad/bookmark-view/
  ;; (setq consult-view-open-function #'bookmark-jump
  ;;       consult-view-list-function #'bookmark-view-names)

  ;; Optionally enable previews. Note that individual previews can be disabled
  ;; via customization variables.
  (consult-preview-mode))

;; Enable Consult-Selectrum integration.
;; This package should be installed if Selectrum is used.
(use-package consult-selectrum
  :demand t)

;; Optionally add the consult-flycheck command.
(use-package consult-flycheck
  :bind (:map flycheck-command-map
         ("!" . consult-flycheck)))

;; Optionally enable richer annotations using the Marginalia package
(use-package marginalia
  ;; The :init configuration is always executed (Not lazy!)
  :init

  ;; Must be in the :init section of use-package such that the mode gets
  ;; enabled right away. Note that this forces loading the package.
  (marginalia-mode))

Configuration settings

Variable	Default	Description
consult-after-jump-hook	'(recenter)	Functions to call after jumping to a location
consult-imenu-narrow	…	Narrowing keys for imenu
consult-line-numbers-widen	t	Show absolute line numbers when narrowing is active.
consult-mode-histories	…	Mode-specific history variables
consult-narrow-key	nil	Narrowing prefix key during completion
consult-widen-key	nil	Widening key during completion
consult-preview-buffer	t	Enable buffer preview during selection
consult-preview-error	t	Enable error preview during selection
consult-preview-flycheck	t	Enable flycheck error preview during selection
consult-preview-flymake	t	Enable flymake diagnostic preview during selection
consult-preview-line	t	Enable line preview during selection
consult-preview-mark	t	Enable mark preview during selection
consult-preview-outline	t	Enable outline preview during selection
consult-preview-theme	t	Enable theme preview during selection
consult-preview-yank	t	Enable yank preview during selection
consult-themes	nil	List of themes to be presented for selection
consult-view-list-function	nil	Function which returns a list of view names as strings
consult-view-open-function	nil	Function to open a view by name

Related packages

It is recommended to install the following package combination:

• consult: This package
• consult-flycheck: Provides the consult-flycheck command.
• consult-selectrum: Provides integration with Selectrum.
• selectrum or icomplete-vertical: Vertical completion systems
• marginalia: Annotations for the completion candidates
• embark: Action commands, which can act on the completion candidates
• orderless or prescient: Completion styles, cndidate filtering, Prescient also offers sorting.

Note that all packages are independent and can potentially be exchanged with alternative components, since there exist no hard dependencies. Furthermore it is possible to get started with only Selectrum and Consult and add more components later to the mix.

Acknowledgements

You probably guessed from the name that this package took inspiration from Counsel by Oleh Krehel. Note that we are not yet on the same level as Counsel in terms of covered functionality.

Some of the commands found in this package originated in the Selectrum wiki.

Code contributions:

• Omar Antolín Camarena
• Sergey Kostyaev
• okamsn
• Clemens Radermacher
• Tom Fitzhenry

Advice and useful discussions:

• Clemens Radermacher
• Omar Antolín Camarena
• Protesilaos Stavrou
• Steve Purcell
• Adam Porter
• Manuel Uberti
• Tom Fitzhenry
• Howard Melman