Intro

So, inevitably, as one delves deeper into their editor of choice, one finds themselves wishing to customise it to some extent.

Vim can handle this sufficiently, but I found myself reaching the point where my vim config started to get a little bit cluttered. So, after having a look at Emacs, I decided to make the switch, courtesy of Doom Emacs.

The init.el file in the private config already handles most of the configuration you’d want to get started with, but there were two things I added to my config.el file that seemed cool.

Day/Night Theme Switcher

I wanted to have Doom Emacs automatically switch between a day theme and a night theme depending on the time of day - which is entirely possible using the below script that I based on this.

Script

I have refactored it from the original to make it work with doom-emacs. I’ve also added comments so you should be able to take it and customise it further if you want to. Put this in your config.el file.

(setq hour
      (string-to-number
       (substring (current-time-string) 11 13))) ;; gets the hour
(if (member hour (number-sequence 6 16)) ;; if between 06:00-16:59
    (setq now 'doom-solarized-light) ;; then light theme
  (setq now 'doom-dracula)) ;; else dark theme from 5pm
(if (equal now doom-theme) ;; only switches to the correct theme if needed
    nil
  (setq doom-theme now))

It checks and switches to the correct theme once, when doom-emacs is started.

Hybrid Line Numbers

I also liked the hybrid line numbers that vim had, so add this to your config.el to bring it to doom emacs.

;; line numbers
(setq display-line-numbers-type 'relative)
(setq linum-relative-current-symbol "")

Here’s my full config.el file. I may update it in the future.