If you’re running Emacs on Windows + WSL you might have some configuration that’s specific to that particular setup.1 I’ve discovered that the simplest way to figure out if Emacs is running in WSL is to check if the host OS is Linux and the WSLENV variable is present:

;; WSL-specific setup
(when (and (eq system-type 'gnu/linux)
           (getenv "WSLENV"))

  ;; your code goes here
  )

Here’s my own WSL-specific config:

;; WSL-specific setup
(when (and (eq system-type 'gnu/linux)
           (getenv "WSLENV"))

  ;; pgtk is only available in Emacs 29+
  ;; without it Emacs fonts don't scale properly on
  ;; HiDPI display
  (if (< emacs-major-version 29)
      (set-frame-font "Cascadia Code 28")
    (set-frame-font "Cascadia Code 14"))

  ;; Teach Emacs how to open links in your default Windows browser
  (let ((cmd-exe "/mnt/c/Windows/System32/cmd.exe")
        (cmd-args '("/c" "start")))
    (when (file-exists-p cmd-exe)
      (setq browse-url-generic-program  cmd-exe
            browse-url-generic-args     cmd-args
            browse-url-browser-function 'browse-url-generic
            search-web-default-browser 'browse-url-generic))))

Basically it does 3 things:

  • Sets the default font. Cascadia Code is a great Windows font and I want to use it in WSL as well for consistency.
  • Figures out if I’m running Emacs over X (X410) or Wayland (WSLg) and adjusts the font size based on this. I have only HiDPI displays that use a scale factor of 2 and I’ve disable the scaling with X410, so I compensate for this with 2 times larger fonts.
  • Teaches Emacs to open links in my default Windows browser (Firefox)

That’s all I have for you today. Feel free to share WSL-specific snippets from your configuration in the comments. Keep hacking!

  1. My personal configuration has bits and pieces specific to macOS, Linux, Windows and WSL (which is mostly Linux). ↩