How to Indent a Selection in Emacs

Creating a keybinding

The most intuitively way I have found to indent your selection in Emacs is with the following keybinding:

(global-set-key (kbd "C->") 'indent-rigidly-right-to-tab-stop)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-<") 'indent-rigidly-left-to-tab-stop)

With this binding you can select a block of text like regular and…

• Use Control + > to indent right
• Use Control + < to indent left

Indent without a custom keybinding

So, maybe you don’t want to set a custom keybinding for whatever reason. There is still hope.

There is no default keybinding (at least from what I have found) for the commands indent-rigidly-{right or left}-to-tab-stop but there is a keybinding for indent-rigidly.

• Control + x TAB

You first hit Control+x and then you press tab. Now you can use the left and right arrows to indent and de-indent.

The one quirk you’ll notice is that this method indents and de-indents by single spaces rather than full tabs.

That’s it!

This took me a while to figure out but it is quite easy to implement.

Drop a comment if you think I should expand this article, covering other information.

Make sure to also check out my Ultimate Guide to Emacs Indentation.