Download Emacs for Windows, Mac, Linux

Windows

Download at http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/

This is the official GNU Emacs, build for Windows by Free Software Foundation.

You'll see file names like these:

• emacs-25.1-i686-w64-mingw32.zip
• emacs-25.1-x86_64-w64-mingw32.zip
• emacs-25.2-i686.zip

The “i686” means 32-bit. The “x86_64” means 64-bit.

To find if your Microsoft Windows is 32 or 64, press ❖ Window key, type “about” in the search box. It'll bring up “About this PC” window. Look for the line “system type”.

After download, right click “extract all” to unzip it.

Open the folder, open the folder named “bin”, click the “runemacs” to start emacs.

To uninstall, just delete the folder.

[see Emacs in Microsoft Windows FAQ]

Mac

On macOS, emacs is instealled by default. But a very old version, version 22.1, dated 2007.

To launch, go to terminal and type

emacs &

emacs --version → print version.

GNU Emacs for Mac

Download at http://emacsformacosx.com/

This is plain GNU Emacs, built by David Caldwell.

Homebrew, Macports

Get emacs from one of the package managers.

• Homebrew http://brew.sh/
• MacPorts https://www.macports.org/

Aquamacs Emacs

Download at http://aquamacs.org/

Aquamacs Emacs is a emacs with complete Mac user interface, by David Reitter.

Linux

Download source code at http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/

• How to Build Emacs on Linux
• Emacs: How to Build Emacs from git Repository

From apt-get

In terminal, type:

which emacs → check if emacs is installed and in your path.

emacs --version → print version.

On Debian/Ubuntu, to check available emacs package version for install,

# search for emacs binary
apt-cache search emacs | grep emacs

Typicall you install by

sudo apt-get install emacs25

, where the emacs25 may be other version.