How to get back to an active minibuffer prompt in emacs without the mouse

Question

In emacs, sometimes I will be in the middle of finding a file or switching buffers or doing something in the minibuffer, and I will click somewhere else for some reason. When I go back, the only way to make the minibuffer prompt active again is to click inside the minibuffer, which is annoying because it is a thin area. Is there any way to switch back to an active minibuffer prompt without using the mouse?

Solution 1

This will do what you want. Bind to the key of your choice:

(defun switch-to-minibuffer-window ()
  "switch to minibuffer window (if active)"
  (interactive)
  (when (active-minibuffer-window)
    (select-frame-set-input-focus (window-frame (active-minibuffer-window)))
    (select-window (active-minibuffer-window))))
(global-set-key (kbd "<f7>") 'switch-to-minibuffer-window)

Solution 2

C-x o 

Repeat as necessary.

C-x o runs the command other-window, which is an interactive built-in function in `C source code'.

If you do not want to cycle through windows, you can add a function in your init file and bind it to a key. Something like this might work:

(defun select-minibuffer ()
 "Make the active minibuffer the selected window."
 (interactive)
 (when (active-minibuffer-window)
   (select-window (active-minibuffer-window))))

Solution 3

Another option is using switch-window

I find it to be a really useful package: it allows you to quickly move to any Emacs window, visually (and I do use a lot of open windows in Emacs).

But I just find out it also allows you to move to the minibuffer, if it is active:

Hope it helps.

Comments

[Chris Johnsen]

Why would you want to include RET like that? It would automatically accept whatever was in the minibuffer (assuming a single C-x o switched to the minibuffer). Generally, one may need to use C-x o multiple times if there are (in Emacs parlance) multiple windows open in the frame (in normal GUI terms: multiple panes in the window).

[Richard Hoskins]

You're right. My bad.

[Ryan C. Thompson]

Is there any way to get directly to the minibuffer without potentially cycling through all windows? Should I just write a loop that does other-window until current window is minibuffer?

[pyrocrasty]

A related package is swap-buffers which uses the same method for swapping the current buffer with that in another window.

[dshepherd]

If you have multiple frames then you need to add (select-frame-set-input-focus (window-frame (active-minibuffer-window))) before the select-window.

[dimitarvp]

@dshepherd I can confirm that after inserting your Elisp line, the enriched function is working well with only one frame as well. Thanks.

[Trey Jackson]

@dshepherd Thanks, have updated code appropriately.