frog-jump-buffer is the fastest buffer-jumping Emacs lisp package around. It is the spiritual successor to ace-jump-buffer and is powered by avy via frog-menu. Just like ace-jump-buffer, it allows you to hop to any Emacs buffer in 2-3 key strokes.

You can install it from MELPA with M-x package-install or here’s a basic use-package declaration:

(use-package frog-jump-buffer :ensure t)

This is the main entry-point. Bind it to your preferred key-binding.

It opens the frog-menu buffer selector. The buffers appear in order of most recent display or selection.

Selecting the avy character next to a buffer switches to that buffer.

Use 0 to toggle between opening in the same window or (other-window).

The numbers 1 through 6 will cycle through the default buffer filters:

• 1: show all buffers in the (buffer-list)
• 2: filter buffers to the same mode as current-buffer
• 3: filter buffers to only buffers represented by files
• 4: show buffers from recentf, which can include killed buffers
• 5: filter buffers to the same project as current-buffer (requires projectiile to be installed)
• 6: filter buffers to similarly named buffers. (i.e. if (current-buffer) is frog.html, show frog.css, *magit: frog*, etc.)

This is a list of regexps of buffer names to ignore or buffer-matching filter functions to use. If you want to cut down on the noise of unimportant buffers, you will want to configure this. Here’s an example:

(dolist (regexp '("TAGS" "^\\*Compile-log" "-debug\\*$" "^\\:" "errors\\*$" "^\\*Backtrace" "-ls\\*$"
                  "stderr\\*$" "^\\*Flymake" "^\\*vc" "^\\*Warnings" "^\\*eldoc" "\\^*Shell Command"))
    (push regexp frog-jump-buffer-ignore-buffers))

This is the maximum number of buffers to show in the frog-menu. The default is 12.

This is the default filter to use when invoking frog-jump-buffer. Shows all buffers by default. If you would like to include recently killed buffers by default, you might want to set this to frog-jump-buffer-filter-recentf.

Set to nil to remove the current buffer from always being the first menu option. This is handy if you would prefer ESC to be your menu dismissal command.

Explicit frame parameters to be used by the posframe frog-jump-buffer creates.

The posframe handler that frog-jump-buffer should use. Defaults to (point) being the bottom left point of the posframe.

Set to a non-nil value to use capital letters instead of numbers for the default filter actions instead of numbers.

Set to nil to only use the filter actions defined in frog-jump-buffer-filter-actions.

This is an empty list available for adding user defined buffer filter actions to be available during frog-jump-buffer.

Set the project package to use. Defaults to the popular projectile if it is installed. You can set it to project if you have Emacs 28+ installed, or this will be the default if projectile is not available.

You can add your own custom filter actions. Each action is a list of the form (KEY DESCRIPTION FILTER-FUNCTION). Each filter function receives a buffer as an argument and should return a non-nil value if that buffer should be considered display-worthy in frog-menu-buffer.

Example usage:

(defun frog-jump-buffer-filter-special-buffers (buffer)
  (with-current-buffer buffer
    (-any? #'derived-mode-p '(comint-mode magit-mode inf-ruby-mode rg-mode compilation-mode))))

(setq frog-jump-buffer-filter-actions
 '(("7" "[special]" frog-jump-buffer-filter-special-buffers)))

If you would like to call a function that uses a specific filter function by default, you can do so by defining a function like this:

(defun frog-jump-buffer-same-project ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((frog-jump-buffer-current-filter-function #'frog-jump-buffer-filter-same-project))
    (frog-jump-buffer)))

See frog-menu-buffer.el for more details.

To opt into experimental support for icons via all-the-icons-ivy, install that package and enable the defcustom variable:

(setq frog-jump-buffer-use-all-the-icons-ivy t)

An icon (which represents the file type) will be inserted in front of the buffer name, such that it is easier to spot the desired buffer to jump to. Here is a screenshot: