How do I make Emacs start without so much fanfare?

Question

Every time I start Emacs I see a page of help text and a bunch of messages suggesting that I try the tutorial. How do I stop this from happening?

Answer 1

Emacs has a couple of variables which inhibit these actions. If you edit your emacs control file (.emacs) and insert the following:

;; inhibit-startup-echo-area-message MUST be set to a hardcoded 
;; string of your login name 
(setq inhibit-startup-echo-area-message "USERNAME")
(setq inhibit-startup-message t)

that should solve your problem. They basically set the inhibit parameters to true to prevent the behavior you want to get rid of.

Answer 2

Put the following in your .emacs:

(setq inhibit-startup-message t)
(setq inhibit-startup-echo-area-message t)

Answer 3

You can customize message in minibuffer therefore remove fanfare:

;; Hide advertisement from minibuffer
(defun display-startup-echo-area-message ()
  (message ""))