Display your ido prospects in a grid, e.g (artist's ascii impression, see URL for some pictures): Find file:~/ -> *this* and-some the that more-things end the-other here The grid works a bit like the zsh completion grid; you can move around it with the arrow keys or tab/backtab, and it scrolls when you get to an edge if not everything will fit. Mostly customizable with (customize-group "ido-grid-mode"). You can change the keys bound, grid max/min dimensions, layout order (rows vs columns), and whether to appear immediately or after . Some examples of ways it can be used are at the github URL; it is easy to use advices to get different invocations for ido to display differently on the screen.