26.12 Setting Frame Parameters

This section describes commands for altering the display style and window management behavior of the selected frame.

M-x set-foreground-color <RET> color <RET>

Specify color color for the foreground of the selected frame. (This also changes the foreground color of the default face.) You can specify color either by its symbolic name or by its RGB numerical specification¹.

M-x set-background-color <RET> color <RET>

Specify color color for the background of the selected frame. (This also changes the background color of the default face.)

M-x set-cursor-color <RET> color <RET>

Specify color color for the cursor of the selected frame.

M-x set-mouse-color <RET> color <RET>

Specify color color for the mouse cursor when it is over the selected frame.

M-x set-border-color <RET> color <RET>

Specify color color for the border of the selected frame.

M-x list-colors-display

Display the defined color names and show what the colors look like. This command is somewhat slow. See list-colors-display.

M-x auto-raise-mode

Toggle whether or not the selected frame should auto-raise. Auto-raise means that every time you move the mouse onto the frame, it raises the frame.

Note that this auto-raise feature is implemented by Emacs itself. Some window managers also implement auto-raise. If you enable auto-raise for Emacs frames in your X window manager, it should work, but it is beyond Emacs's control and therefore auto-raise-mode has no effect on it.

M-x auto-lower-mode

Toggle whether or not the selected frame should auto-lower. Auto-lower means that every time you move the mouse off the frame, the frame moves to the bottom of the stack of X windows.

The command auto-lower-mode has no effect on auto-lower implemented by the X window manager. To control that, you must use the appropriate window manager features.

M-x set-frame-font <RET> font <RET>

Specify font font as the principal font for the selected frame. The principal font controls several face attributes of the default face (see Faces). For example, if the principal font has a height of 12 pt, all text will be drawn in 12 pt fonts, unless you use another face that specifies a different height. See Font X, for ways to list the available fonts on your system.

You can also set a frame's principal font through a pop-up menu. Press S-Mouse-1 to activate this menu.

In Emacs versions that use an X toolkit, the color-setting and font-setting functions don't affect menus and the menu bar, since they are displayed by their own widget classes. To change the appearance of the menus and menu bar, you must use X resources (see Resources). See Colors, regarding colors. See Font X, regarding choice of font.

Colors, fonts, and other attributes of the frame's display can also be customized by setting frame parameters in the variable default-frame-alist (see Creating Frames). For a detailed description of frame parameters and customization, see Frame Parameters.