Using Emacsclient + Org Capture + System Keybinds for capturing findings.

Disclaimer: This configuration requires running doom-emacs.

You may have read different note-taking techniques, stumbled upon countless blog posts. Yet, here you are, reading another hack to satisfy your itch. If the title caught your eyes, then it’s probably the words “emacs”, “org” and “system keybinds”.

Emacs offer a powerful server that allows to clients which spawn frame equivalent to the editor window. Since emacs is easily hackable using emacs-lisp, it won’t take long to come up with scripts to create a new frame, change the editor buffer to capture buffer, allow capturing, and finally close the capture window.

If you are a veteran emacs user you have probably done this multiple times. But for someone who is just starting it out, it may be overwhelming and magical. Once you feel the magic, you will get hooked to it.

Here you find a spell in emacs-lisp that defines a function to launch the capture buffer.

(defun launch-note (&optional initial-input key)
  (set-frame-name "doom-capture")
  (add-hook 'org-capture-after-finalize-hook 'post-org-launch-note)
  (letf! ((#'pop-to-buffer #'switch-to-buffer))
    (interactive)
    (switch-to-buffer (doom-fallback-buffer))
    (let ((org-capture-initial initial-input)
          org-capture-entry)
      (when (and key (not (string-empty-p key)))
        (setq org-capture-entry (org-capture-select-template key)))
      (funcall #'org-capture))
    )
  )

(defun post-org-launch-note ()
  (remove-hook 'org-capture-after-finalize-hook 'post-org-launch-note)
  (delete-frame))

If you are confused (especially when starting out), that is totally normal. Emacs offer hooks that allows to define extra invocable after calling certain functions.

The above snippet adds a function post-org-launch-note to org-capture-after-finalize-hook. Therefore whatever is inside the post-org-launch-note is going to be called after you complete org capture. The code inside letf! creates a pop-up buffer and runs the org-capture inside it.

Once you have this code snippet running, all you have to do is bind the keys in your window manager, or shortcut manager so that it can run the following script. following way

emacsclient -c -F "((name . \"doom-capture\"))" --eval '(launch-note)'

For non-doom users the functions letf! is a macro defined here.