Lockdown Beam: hide-mode-line

Fun fact: the mode-line is the one Emacs thing I’ve probably spent most of my tinkering time on. Why? Hard to tell. I consider it a place for useful information, but the only interaction I have with it is looking at it. It’s not like some of those fancy packages offering you all manners of interactive commands and assorted key bindings.¹ It’s a, well, it’s a line.

Among the several iterations, this one has lasted the longest. But then again, not too long ago I felt the irresistible call of minimalism, and so I ended up with this other one. And yet, despite the immoderate amount of care I spent on it, there are times where I just want it out of my way.

For instance, I have no use for the mode-line in shell-mode or when I am reading the latest news via Elfeed. Luckily, Henrik Lissner’s hide-mode-line is out there for this kind of messy work.

Provided the mode you don’t want to see the mode-line in has a hook, you can add #'hide-mode-line-mode to it with add-hook. For Elfeed, however, a different solution is needed:

(defun mu-elfeed-open ()
  "Open elfeed and hide the mode-line."
  (interactive)
  (mu-save-window-config-then-call #'elfeed)
  (hide-mode-line-mode 1))

Have a look at Passing the prefix argument around if you want to know what mu-save-window-config-then-call does.

Obviously you can go berserk and hide the mode-line everywhere with Henrik’s package. But would you really do that? Don’t be cruel and think about it.

Next time we are going to mark things, so keep your markers around.

Stay safe.