Emacs Dashboard

An extensible emacs startup screen showing you what’s most important.

Features

1. Displays an awesome Emacs banner!
2. Recent files
3. Bookmarks list
4. Recent projects list (Depends on `projectile` or `project.el` package)
5. Org mode agenda
6. Register list
7. Supports both all-the-icons and nerd-icons

Screenshot

Dependencies

You will need the following packages which are all available on MELPA:

1. page-break-lines (optional)
2. projectile (optional)
3. all-the-icons (optional)
4. nerd-icons (optional)

Usage

M-x package-install RET dashboard

Open the Dashboard

You can set up the dashboard to open automatically at startup using dashboard-setup-startup-hook:

(require 'dashboard)
(dashboard-setup-startup-hook)

Or with use-package:

;; use-package with package.el:
(use-package dashboard
  :ensure t
  :config
  (dashboard-setup-startup-hook))

;; use-package with Elpaca:
(use-package dashboard
  :elpaca t
  :config
  (add-hook 'elpaca-after-init-hook #'dashboard-insert-startupify-lists)
  (add-hook 'elpaca-after-init-hook #'dashboard-initialize)
  (dashboard-setup-startup-hook))

Alternatively, if you don’t want the dashboard to open by default, you can use the interactive function dashboard-open to open it when you do want it.

By default, the dashboard will show three lists, recent files and bookmarks and org-agenda items.

The widget “projects”, which shows a list of recent projects, is not enabled by default since it depends on packages that might not be available. To activate the widget, set the variable dashboard-projects-backend to either =’projectile= (projectile, available from melpa) or =’project-el= (project.el, available from GNU elpa), then add an entry like (projects . 5) to the variable dashboard-items.

The function dashboard-refresh-buffer (an alias for dashboard-open) can be used to visit and refresh the dashboard.

Emacs Daemon

In addition to the above, configure initial-buffer-choice to show Dashboard in frames created with emacsclient -c as follows:

(setq initial-buffer-choice (lambda () (get-buffer-create dashboard-buffer-name)))

Configuration

To update the banner or banner title

;; Set the title
(setq dashboard-banner-logo-title "Welcome to Emacs Dashboard")
;; Set the banner
(setq dashboard-startup-banner [VALUE])
;; Value can be:
;;  - 'official which displays the official emacs logo.
;;  - 'logo which displays an alternative emacs logo.
;;  - an integer which displays one of the text banners
;;    (see dashboard-banners-directory files).
;;  - a string that specifies a path for a custom banner
;;    currently supported types are gif/image/text/xbm.
;;  - a cons of 2 strings which specifies the path of an image to use
;;    and other path of a text file to use if image isn't supported.
;;    ("path/to/image/file/image.png" . "path/to/text/file/text.txt").
;;  - a list that can display an random banner,
;;    supported values are: string (filepath), 'official, 'logo and integers.

;; Content is not centered by default. To center, set
(setq dashboard-center-content t)
;; vertically center content
(setq dashboard-vertically-center-content t)

;; To disable shortcut "jump" indicators for each section, set
(setq dashboard-show-shortcuts nil)

To customize which items are displayed, you can use the following snippet

(setq dashboard-items '((recents   . 5)
                        (bookmarks . 5)
                        (projects  . 5)
                        (agenda    . 5)
                        (registers . 5)))

This will add the recent files, bookmarks, projects, org-agenda and registers widgets to your dashboard each displaying 5 items.

To customize which widgets to display in order (example: Banner, footer message …):

(setq dashboard-startupify-list '(dashboard-insert-banner
                                  dashboard-insert-newline
                                  dashboard-insert-banner-title
                                  dashboard-insert-newline
                                  dashboard-insert-navigator
                                  dashboard-insert-newline
                                  dashboard-insert-init-info
                                  dashboard-insert-items
                                  dashboard-insert-newline
                                  dashboard-insert-footer))

See dashboard-startupify-list for all the widgets avalaibles.

To enable cycle navigation between each section:

(setq dashboard-navigation-cycle t)

To customize string format in shortcuts:

(setq dashboard-heading-shorcut-format " [%s]")

To customize item shortcuts:

(setq dashboard-item-shortcuts '((recents   . "r")
                                 (bookmarks . "m")
                                 (projects  . "p")
                                 (agenda    . "a")
                                 (registers . "e")))

To modify the widget heading name:

(setq dashboard-item-names '(("Recent Files:"               . "Recently opened files:")
                             ("Agenda for today:"           . "Today's agenda:")
                             ("Agenda for the coming week:" . "Agenda:")))

To use all-the-icons package:

(setq dashboard-icon-type 'all-the-icons)  ; use `all-the-icons' package

To use nerd-icons package:

(setq dashboard-display-icons-p t)     ; display icons on both GUI and terminal
(setq dashboard-icon-type 'nerd-icons) ; use `nerd-icons' package

To add icons to the widget headings and their items:

(setq dashboard-set-heading-icons t)
(setq dashboard-set-file-icons t)

To modify heading icons with another icon from all-the-icons octicons:

(dashboard-modify-heading-icons '((recents   . "file-text")
                                  (bookmarks . "book")))

To modify heading icons with another icon from nerd-icons octicons:

(dashboard-modify-heading-icons '((recents   . "nf-oct-file_text")
                                  (bookmarks . "nf-oct-book")))

To customize the buttons of the navigator like this:

;; Format: "(icon title help action face prefix suffix)"
(setq dashboard-navigator-buttons
      `(;; line1
        ((,(all-the-icons-octicon "mark-github" :height 1.1 :v-adjust 0.0)
          "Homepage"
          "Browse homepage"
          (lambda (&rest _) (browse-url "homepage")))
         ("★" "Star" "Show stars" (lambda (&rest _) (show-stars)) warning)
         ("?" "" "?/h" #'show-help nil "<" ">"))
        ;; line 2
        ((,(all-the-icons-faicon "linkedin" :height 1.1 :v-adjust 0.0)
          "Linkedin"
          ""
          (lambda (&rest _) (browse-url "homepage")))
         ("⚑" nil "Show flags" (lambda (&rest _) (message "flag")) error))))

To use it with counsel-projectile or persp-projectile

(setq dashboard-projects-switch-function 'counsel-projectile-switch-project-by-name)

Or

(setq dashboard-projects-switch-function 'projectile-persp-switch-project)

Org mode’s agenda

To display today’s agenda items on the dashboard, add agenda to dashboard-items:

(add-to-list 'dashboard-items '(agenda) t)

To show agenda for the upcoming seven days set the variable dashboard-week-agenda to t.

(setq dashboard-week-agenda t)

By default org-agenda entries are filter by time, only showing those task with DEADLINE, SCHEDULE-TIME or TIMESTAMP . To show all agenda entries (except DONE)

(setq dashboard-filter-agenda-entry 'dashboard-no-filter-agenda)

To have an extra filter, MATCH parameter is exposed as dashboard-match-agenda-entry variable, by default is nil

‘MATCH’ is a tags/property/TODO match. Org iterates only matched headlines. Org iterates over all headlines when MATCH is nil or t.

See Org Manual for more information.

Once the agenda appears in the dashboard, org-agenda-files stay open. With (setq dashboard-agenda-release-buffers t) the org files are close. Note that this could slow down the dashboard buffer refreshment.

Agenda sort

Agenda is now sorted with dashboard-agenda-sort-strategy following the idea of org-agenda-sorting-strategy. Suported strategies are priority-up, priority-down, time-up, time-down, todo-state-up and todo-state-down

Agenda format

To personalize the aspect of each entry, there is dashboard-agenda-prefix-format which initial value is ~” %i %-12:c %-10s “~ where %i is the icon category of the item (see org-agenda-category-icon-alist), %-12:c gives the category a 12 chars wide field and append a colon to the category. A similar padding but for a 10 wide field is %-10s that is for the scheduling or deadline information. For more information see org-agenda-prefix-format.

Deadline or Scheduling time will be formatted using dashboard-agenda-time-string-format and the keywords (TODO, DONE) respect org-agenda-todo-keyword-format.

Agenda tags

To customize the tags format there is a variable dashboard-agenda-tags-format. This variable could be any function that receives the tags directly from org-get-tags. By default dashboard-agenda-tags-format is set to identity. To hide the tags set the variable to ignore: (setq dashboard-agenda-tags-format 'ignore) or to nil.

FAQ

Check out our Frequently Asked Questions.

Faces

It is possible to customize Dashboard’s appearance using the following faces:

dashboard-banner-logo-title

Highlights the banner title.

dashboard-text-banner

Highlights text banners.

dashboard-heading

Highlights widget headings.

dashboard-items-face

Highlights widget items.

Shortcuts

You can use any of the following shortcuts inside Dashboard

Shortcut	Function
Tab Or C-i	Next Item
Shift-Tab	Previous Item
Return / Mouse Click / C-m	Open
r	Recent files
m	Bookmarks
p	Projects
a	Org-Mode Agenda
e	Registers
g	Refresh contents
{	Previous section
}	Next section

Wish List

1. [X] Center content
2. [X] More banner options
3. [X] Customizing the list of widgets to display
4. [X] Integrate Org-mode’s agenda
5. [ ] Listing Perspectives

Contributions

To contribute your changes to this package, please do the following:

1. Fork the repo
2. Clone a local copy
3. Make your changes
4. Push and create your PR

When working on this package, it’s typical to uninstall dashboard, develop your changes and then install this as “development version”.

This is accomplished with the following steps:

# In emacs:
M-x package-delete dashboard-<version> RET

make package
make install

Prerequisites

Eask