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I am aware that I can switch to the next window with the following commands:

C-x o (other-window)

However, in the emacs manual I found the following description:

A numeric argument means to move several steps in the cyclic order of windows. A negative argument moves around the cycle in the opposite order. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Other-Window.html

Unfortunately, I didn't find out how this actually works. When do I have to type the argument? After the "C-x o", i.e. "C-x o 3" if I want to jump three steps? This didn't work on my Mac.

I was quite surprised about this notion in the manual, because in all the posts that I read about the window switching capabilities of emacs, nobody ever mentioned this capability.

Maik Schürmann
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    Unrelated to your actual question but you might want to check out https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16607791/emacs-move-around-split-windows-in-a-specified-direction to learn about an alternative way to move around multiple windows. – Thomas Sep 14 '20 at 20:54

1 Answers1

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This is about the numeric prefix argument.

C-u 3 followed by C-x o selects the 3rd "other" window in the cyclic order. C-u -3 selects the 3rd one in the other direction of cycling.

You can use just C-3 or M-3 for the first prefix, and just C-- 3 or M-- 3 for the second.

See the Emacs manual, node Arguments.

Drew
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