Symptom#

Typing in the minibuffer, such as :qa on evil's ex line or in M-:, pops up a completion list without being asked.

Cause#

corfu turns itself on in any minibuffer that offers completion, and the auto-popup settings meant for code buffers (corfu-auto, a short delay and prefix) then apply there too.

Fix#

Keep corfu in minibuffers but remove its auto trigger there, right after corfu turns on in a minibuffer. In the corfu version used, the trigger is the buffer-local post-command-hook entry corfu-auto--post-command:

(add-hook 'corfu-mode-hook
          (lambda ()
            (when (minibufferp)
              (remove-hook 'post-command-hook #'corfu-auto--post-command t))))

Tab still completes on demand. The internal hook name may change between corfu versions, so check it with C-h v post-command-hook in a minibuffer.

Evidence#

Emacs 30 with corfu and evil, 2026-09-26: after the change, typing :qa showed no popup, and Tab listed qa, qa!, qall and wqa. Code buffers still opened the popup by themselves.