GNU Emacs Manual - Colors X

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## Window Color Options

On a color display, you can specify which color to use for various parts of the Emacs display. To find out what colors are available on your system, look at the ``/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt'` file. If you do not specify colors, the default for the background is white and the default for all other colors is black. On a monochrome display, the foreground is black, the background is white, and the border is gray if the display supports that.

Here is a list of the options for specifying colors:

``-fg color'`
``--foreground-color=color'`
  Specify the foreground color.
``-bg color'`
``--background-color=color'`
  Specify the background color.
``-bd color'`
``--border-color=color'`
  Specify the color of the border of the X window.
``-cr color'`
``--cursor-color=color'`
  Specify the color of the Emacs cursor which indicates where point is.
``-ms color'`
``--mouse-color=color'`
  Specify the color for the mouse cursor when the mouse is in the Emacs window.
``-r'`
``--reverse-video'`
  Reverse video--swap the foreground and background colors.

For example, to use a coral mouse cursor and a slate blue text cursor, enter:

    emacs -ms coral -cr 'slate blue' &

You can reverse the foreground and background colors through the ``-r'` option or with the X resource ``reverseVideo'`.

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