Tips and Tricks

Start Emacs.app GUI from command line/Shell

Whether you install with brew or brew cask, an emacs symlink will be added to your $(brew --prefix)/bin so that you can start Emacs by running the emacs command in your shell. However, this emacs command will behave differently depending on which you used, because brew cask installs a single macOS app bundle, while brew installs files according to the UNIX tradition.

By default, running the emacs command from your shell will start the Emacs.app GUI if you installed from brew cask, while the same command will start the Emacs TUI (emacs -nw) if you installed from brew.

brew users may use the --with-starter install option, which will place a simple GUI starter under $(brew --prefix)/bin, so that the emacs command can be used to start the Emacs.app GUI just as with brew cask.

Other starter scripts can be found from this gist and its comments.