Ivy

Bring Emacs out of the eighties.

Config

There's a lot of occasions where Emacs asks you to input text to match a file name in a directory, or of a potential buffer selection. The family of packages ivy/swiper¹ work together toward this common goal of improving the default completion menu system.

(use-package ivy
  :diminish
  :config (ivy-mode 1))

Replacements

Include counsel², a customized set of commands to replace the built-in completion buffers. This will provide an experience similar to what you've maybe experienced on doom or spacemacs.

(use-package counsel
  :after ivy
  :custom (counsel-linux-app-format-function #'counsel-linux-app-format-function-name-only)
  :config (counsel-mode 1))

Additional details

Provide more information about each item in the completion menu with ivy-rich³. This will include snippets from any available documentation, or active buffers.

(use-package ivy-rich
  :after counsel
  :init (ivy-rich-mode 1))

Popup selection frame

Display ivy¹ completions in a popup buffer with the ivy-posframe⁴ package. I prefer to use this since the menu appears in the center of my screen, stopping my from having to tilt my head to look down at the default completion menu appearing in the mini-buffer.

(use-package ivy-posframe
  :after ivy
  :when (window-system)
  :custom (ivy-posframe-display-functions-alist '((t . ivy-posframe-display)))
          (ivy-posframe-parameters '((parent-frame nil)))
  :config (ivy-posframe-mode 1))

Candidate selection sorting

Sort completion candidates based on how recently or frequently they're selected with prescient.el⁵. This can be helpful when using M-x to run commands that aren't bound to specific key-strokes.

(use-package ivy-prescient
  :after counsel
  :custom (ivy-prescient-enable-filtering nil)
  :config (prescient-persist-mode 1)
          (ivy-prescient-mode 1))