Close all buffers besides the current one in Emacs

emacs elisp
Sridhar Ratnakumar picture Sridhar Ratnakumar · Aug 5, 2010 · Viewed 30.5k times · Source

How do I close all but the current buffer in Emacs? Similar to "Close other tabs" feature in modern web browsers?

Answer

phils picture phils · Aug 6, 2010

For a more manual approach, you can list all buffers with C-x C-b, mark buffers in the list for deletion with d, and then use x to remove them.

I also recommend replacing list-buffers with the more advanced ibuffer: (global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-b") 'ibuffer). The above will work with ibuffer, but you could also do this:

m (mark the buffer you want to keep)
t (toggle marks)
D (kill all marked buffers)

I also use this snippet from the Emacs Wiki, which would further streamline this manual approach:

;; Ensure ibuffer opens with point at the current buffer's entry.
(defadvice ibuffer
  (around ibuffer-point-to-most-recent) ()
  "Open ibuffer with cursor pointed to most recent buffer name."
  (let ((recent-buffer-name (buffer-name)))
    ad-do-it
    (ibuffer-jump-to-buffer recent-buffer-name)))
(ad-activate 'ibuffer)

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