Helm (https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm) is another way of doing this, although I don't use it (yet - I'm going to check it out sooner or later).

The "command palette" (M-x or <esc>: in Emacs/Vim respectively) is a very useful tool for both exploring and working with the editor. It's kind of sad that people forgot about it for a few decades and only rediscovered it recently thanks to Sublime and similar.