# Avy for Emacs

10 Hacker News commenters recommended Avy for Emacs and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Emacs package that jumps the cursor to visible text by typing a few characters, which people find fast and efficient. Its main limit is that it only moves the cursor to text on screen.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast jumping with few keystrokes (3 comments): "instantly turns that into one or two keystrokes to filter down" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46029057)) "you can even get a faster flow of jumping around" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529491)) "It is extremely easy to use and very efficient." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46027956))
- Becomes muscle memory via keybindings (2 comments): "my normal-mod binding for avy-goto-char and my other evil-leader stuff is muscle memory now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46059860)) "press the chord to jump with avy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47041938))
- Good for moving and selecting text (2 comments): "My favorite way to move around in Emacs, and to move text around, is via avy-mode" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46026420)) "Avy can be used to select a word, line, or region." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46027984))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Evil mode for Emacs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/evil-mode.md): 39 recommend
- [TRAMP for Emacs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tramp.md): 25 recommend
- [SLIME](https://hackerapproved.com/p/slime.md): 19 recommend
- [Vertico](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vertico.md): 18 recommend
- [Eglot](https://hackerapproved.com/p/eglot.md): 16 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Avy for Emacs", https://hackerapproved.com/p/avy/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).