Occult - from Latin occultus - “hidden, secret”

It lets you collapse any buffer region into a single-line summary using overlays. The hidden text remains fully present in the buffer - accessible to buffer-string, org-export, copy/kill, and LLM context extraction.

The first line of the folded region stays visible and navigable as regular text. Everything after it is hidden behind an ellipsis.

Sometimes you want to visually declutter a buffer without losing content. LLM chat sessions get verbose, org documents accumulate boilerplate, eshell output floods the screen. Existing folding mechanisms (outline-mode, org-cycle, hideshow) are structure-aware - they fold headings, blocks, or defuns. They can’t fold an arbitrary selected region.

Occult works on any region in any buffer - including read-only and special-mode buffers. The hidden text is never removed from the buffer, so tools that read buffer content (LLM packages like gptel, eca, agent-shell; org-export; copy/kill) see the full unfolded text.

Available on MELPA:

(use-package occult
  :ensure t)

Three commands:

• occult-toggle - select a region and call it to collapse. Call it again with point on a fold to expand. TAB also toggles when point is on a fold.
• occult-reveal-all - expand all folds in the current buffer.
• occult-edit-region - open the fold at point in a narrowed indirect buffer for editing. Bound to e on the fold keymap.

Bind them however you like:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c z") #'occult-toggle)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c Z") #'occult-reveal-all)

Press e with point on a fold (or call M-x occult-edit-region) to open the fold content in a separate indirect buffer. The base buffer’s fold stays collapsed while you edit; changes propagate live because the text is shared. A header line shows the current commit and abort key bindings. When the base buffer is read-only the session opens in view mode with a single close key instead.

Edit Occult Fold  │ C-c C-c commit │ C-c C-k abort

• C-c C-c (customizable via occult-edit-commit-key) - commit and close the indirect buffer, keeping user changes.
• C-c C-k (customizable via occult-edit-abort-key) - restore the original fold contents and close the indirect buffer.

Emacs isearch (C-s / C-r) finds text inside folds. Matches are temporarily revealed during search and permanently expanded if isearch exits inside a fold.

Evil users: / and ? (evil-ex-search-forward / evil-ex-search-backward) are also supported. When a search lands inside a fold, it is temporarily revealed and re-hidden when point moves away.

The native evil fold commands can be advised to work with occult. When a visual selection or occult fold is present, they delegate to occult; otherwise they fall through to default behavior.

• zc / zC in visual state - create an occult fold from the selection
• zo / zO on an occult fold - reveal it
• za - toggle: create from visual selection or reveal existing fold
• zR - also reveals all occult folds alongside native folds

(with-eval-after-load 'evil
  (dolist (fn '(evil-close-fold evil-close-fold-rec))
    (advice-add fn :around
                (lambda (fn &rest args)
                  (if (evil-visual-state-p)
                      (occult-hide-region (region-beginning) (region-end))
                    (apply fn args)))))

  (dolist (fn '(evil-open-fold evil-open-fold-rec))
    (advice-add fn :around
                (lambda (fn &rest args)
                  (if (cl-find-if (lambda (o) (overlay-get o 'occult))
                                  (overlays-at (point)))
                      (occult-toggle)
                    (apply fn args)))))

  (advice-add 'evil-open-folds :around
              (lambda (fn &rest args)
                (apply fn args)
                (occult-reveal-all)))

  (advice-add 'evil-toggle-fold :around
              (lambda (fn &rest args)
                (if (or (evil-visual-state-p)
                        (cl-find-if (lambda (o) (overlay-get o 'occult))
                                    (overlays-at (point))))
                    (occult-toggle)
                  (apply fn args)))))

Other Emacs folding packages. Most fold by language structure or indentation; occult complements them by folding arbitrary regions into a one-line summary, keeping the underlying text accessible to buffer-string, org-export, kill/yank, and isearch.

• hideshow - built-in hs-minor-mode for syntax-aware folding of comments and code blocks
• folding / folding-mode - marker-based folding (triple-brace comments), by Jari Aalto
• origami - parser-based structural folding with indentation fallback
• lsp-origami - origami driven by LSP fold ranges
• ts-fold - tree-sitter folding via external emacs-tree-sitter
• treesit-fold - tree-sitter folding via built-in treesit (Emacs 29+)
• yafolding - indentation-based folding

Copyright © 2026 Ag Ibragimov

GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.