Emacs Carnival: May I recommend…

Customizable key sequence to escape from insert state and everything else in Emacs.

I discovered this as it's auto-configured for Spacemacs.

It's the tiniest thing, but I use it so much. Almost after every sentence, probably at least after every paragraph.

If you use evil, then you use vi-style bindings and modal editing. You have an 'insert' mode, where you input text, and a 'normal' mode, where you navigate and edit your text. You switch between them very frequently.

By default the key to exit from insert to normal is Esc. But that's quite a stretch on a standard keyboard. Ctrl-[ is the same as Esc, less of a stretch but needs your pinkies. People often remap Ctrl and Caps Lock, which makes sense for Ctrl-heavy use, but with Spacemacs you use Ctrl a lot less than you would with vanilla Emacs. I've never done that remap.

So, evil-escape by default simply maps a quick press of fd to function as the exit to normal mode. I can't remember what this felt like at first, but now it is second nature. To the point that I often end up typing 'fdfd' a few times when I'm using vim on a server until I realise it's not present there…

When I set up Doom on my phone, after a while of usage I also wanted something like evil-escape. I run it in Termux, often using it one-handed, and was finding getting to the Esc key there can often be a bit of a stretch too.

As it happens, Doom comes with evil-escape set up by default, but I had a couple of issues with the defaults there. See issue with evil-escape in Doom on Termux. I set up jj to trigger evil-escape. Much easier, far less stretching over time

It occurs to me that df may be a better keychain than fd. Even easier on the fingers. I may try that.

The above leads me into another recommendation. If you're using Emacs on your phone, I recommend trying evil. The navigational and editing shortcuts in normal mode, all easily accessible via the main alpha keys, is incredibly useful.

Also, try SPC as your leader for choosing commands. This is the default for Spacemacs or Doom, and they both come loaded with sensible follow up key chains for commands. The pattern of SPC somekey somekey to access your Emacs commands is great on mobile, virtually no stretching from the main rows.

Also, try mapping M-x to SPC SPC. That's the Spacemacs default, and I got very used to it on desktop. On Doom on my phone, M-x is SPC-: by default. Not as easy as SPC SPC when you're one-handed. See Tweaking Doom Emacs to use SPC SPC.