Prevent showing buffer reversion message while working in the minibuffer

Question

Problem

When the file underlying buffer foo is changed, Emacs shows Reverting buffer 'foo'. in the echo area.

The problem is that it will do this even when I'm working in the minibuffer, and the message will simply overlay whatever I have there, making seeing what I'm working on impossible.

Question

Is there any way to change this behavior?

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Outside of emacs, create a file: echo test > foo
2. emacs -Q
3. M-: (global-auto-revert-mode)
4. M-: (find-file "foo")
5. M-x switch-to-buffer *scratch*
6. M-x to open the minibuffer, and keep it open.
7. Outside of Emacs, append something to the file: echo bar >> foo

At this point you should see the message in the minibuffer saying Reverting buffer 'foo'.

Answer 1

I think you could add something like this to your initialization:

(advice-add
 'auto-revert-handler
 :around (lambda (orig-fun &rest args)
           (let ((auto-revert-verbose (not (minibufferp (window-buffer)))))
              (apply orig-fun args))))

Based on https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Minibuffer-Misc.html#Minibuffer-Misc, you can check whether the current buffer is a minibuffer by calling the minibufferp function as you enter the auto-revert-handler function to decide whether to temporarily set auto-revert-verbose to nil.

Answer 2

You most probably have set the global autorevert mode on using this form:

(global-auto-revert-mode)

You can stop it sending messages to minibuffer by setting

(setq auto-revert-verbose nil)

Set it back to t if and when you would like to be notified again.