1.4 The Menu Bar

Each Emacs frame normally has a menu bar at the top which you can use to perform common operations. There's no need to list them here, as you can more easily see them yourself.

On a graphical display, you can use the mouse to choose a command from the menu bar. A right-arrow at the end of the menu item means it leads to a subsidiary menu; ‘...’ at the end means that the command invoked will read arguments (further input from you) before it actually does anything.

You can also invoke the first menu bar item by pressing <F10> (to run the command menu-bar-open). You can then navigate the menus with the arrow keys. You select an item by pressing <RET> and cancel menu navigation with <ESC>.

To view the full command name and documentation for a menu item, type C-h k, and then select the menu bar with the mouse in the usual way (see section Documentation for a Key).

On text-only terminals with no mouse, you can use the menu bar by typing M-` or <F10> (these run the command tmm-menubar). This lets you select a menu item with the keyboard. A provisional choice appears in the echo area. You can use the up and down arrow keys to move through the menu to different items, and then you can type <RET> to select the item.

Each menu item also has an assigned letter or digit which designates that item; it is usually the initial of some word in the item's name. This letter or digit is separated from the item name by ‘=>’. You can type the item's letter or digit to select the item.

Some of the commands in the menu bar have ordinary key bindings as well; one such binding is shown in parentheses after the item itself.