Show all open buffers in Emacs

Question

In emacs, is there an M-x command or key combo to render all current open buffers into different windows? For clarity, let's suppose I have four open buffers, and I am only seeing one currently being displayed, and I would like in one step to show each buffer in one quadrant.

Answer 1

You will be able to start with the following code if there is not an already-known way to do it:

(defun buffer-in-window-list ()
  (let (buffers)
    (walk-windows (lambda (window) (push (window-buffer window) buffers)) t t)
    buffers))

(defun display-all-buffers ()
  (interactive)
  (let (buffers-in-window (buffer-in-window-list))
    (dolist (buffer (buffer-list))
      (when (and (not (string-match "\\`[[:space:]]*\\*" (buffer-name buffer)))
                 (not (memq buffer buffers-in-window)))
        (set-window-buffer (split-window (get-largest-window)) buffer)))
    (balance-windows)))

The display-all-buffers command opens a new window for each buffer that is not currently displayed anywhere (including other frames). For usability, it ignores buffers whose names start with * (optionally, prefixed with whitespace characters) because they are usually for internal use only.

Note that Emacs does not allow a user to make too small a window. So, when there are too many buffers to display, the command will display as many buffers as possible in order of most recent display or selection and signal an error.

Answer 2

I recommend ibuffer. M-x ibuffer is probably what you want. Here's my ibuffer configuration:

;; *Messages* is so annoying. Also, I really like ibuffer
(require 'ibuf-ext)
(add-to-list 'ibuffer-never-show-predicates "^\\*Messages")
(add-to-list 'ibuffer-never-show-predicates "^\\*Completions")
(global-set-key (kbd "C-b") 'ibuffer)
(kill-buffer "*scratch*")
('ibuffer)
(switch-to-buffer "*Ibuffer*")