If you have emacs connected to more than one "terminal" (X11 server or tty), you can walk back and forth between the terminals entering commands. But if you neglect to finish a command and leave the terminal while the minibuffer is active, then when you get to the other terminal room, emacs is completely unresponsive. emacs -Q --daemon=test [on tty1:] emacsclient -t --socket-name=test [on tty2:] emacsclient -t --socket-name=test [on tty1:] M-x [on tty2:] C-g C-g C-] C-g ... [nothing happens] This seems to be the case regardless of whether the terminals are graphical or ttys, and regardless of whether created by emacsclient or make-frame-on-display. This can be seen as a feature request more than a bug report, but it's at least a documentation bug that the Multiple Displays info node makes no mention of the limitation. Ideally, when the minibuffer is active on one terminal and a keystroke is received on another, the miniwindow would move to or be duplicated on the other terminal. At a minimum, it should be possible to get emacs to abort to top-level by typing some combination of C-g or C-] at any terminal. A related situation that doesn't involve the minibuffer is: [on tty1:] (while t t) C-x C-e [on tty2:] C-g C-g C-] C-g ... [nothing happens] Some way of reliably aborting to top-level from any terminal would mostly fix both problems.