<p> I am a long-time user of short-lived Emacs sessions who is now trying to take advantage of having a browser that runs for days or weeks at a time—I&#39;ve configured my desktop shell to auto-start <code class="verbatim">emacs –daemon</code> when I log in, and I rarely restart it (though it&#39;s probably still do it more often than a really hard-core Emacs user would).</p> <p> As a consequence, my minibuffer history starts to fill up with good stuff that I want to re-use in order to increase my efficiency.</p>

<p> I&#39;ve long known about using the <code class="verbatim">UP (previous-history-element)</code> and <code class="verbatim">DOWN (next-history-element)</code> keys to move through the minibuffer history. It&#39;s always been a little jarring that <code class="verbatim">C-p (previous-line)</code> and <code class="verbatim">C-n (next-line)</code>, which I&#39;m very habituated to use (perhaps even more than the actual arrow keys, since I touch type, and can use them without moving my hands) don&#39;t work in the minibuffer—Emacs just beeps unhappily at me.</p> <p> I was pleased to find out that, in addition to the dedicated arrow keys, <code class="verbatim">M-p (previous-history-element)</code> and <code class="verbatim">M-n (next-history-element)</code> scroll through the minibuffer history. The should be much more easily accessible to me—and I do scroll through the minibuffer a lot.</p>