Quickstart (require 'unicode-progress-reporter) (unicode-progress-reporter-setup) ;; to see a demo (unicode-progress-reporter-test) Explanation This is a trivial modification to Emacs' built-in progress reporter to display spinners using Unicode characters. To use unicode-progress-reporter, place the unicode-progress-reporter.el library somewhere Emacs can find it, and add the following to your ~/.emacs file: (require 'unicode-progress-reporter) (unicode-progress-reporter-setup) See Also M-x customize-group RET unicode-progress-reporter RET Notes redefines `progress-reporter-do-update' alters private variable `progress-reporter--pulse-characters' Compatibility and Requirements GNU Emacs version 24.4-devel : yes, at the time of writing GNU Emacs version 24.3 : yes GNU Emacs version 23.3 and lower : no Requires ucs-utils.el Bugs TODO ; License This library is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with GNU Emacs. If not, see .