21.11 Frame Parameters

You can control the default appearance and behavior of all frames by specifying a default list of frame parameters in the variable default-frame-alist. Its value should be a list of entries, each specifying a parameter name and a value for that parameter. These entries take effect whenever Emacs creates a new frame, including the initial frame.

For example, you can add the following lines to your init file (see The Emacs Initialization File) to set the default frame width to 90 character columns, the default frame height to 40 character rows, and the default font to ‘ Monospace-10’:

(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(width  . 90))
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(height . 40))
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Monospace-10"))

For a list of frame parameters and their effects, see Frame
Parameters in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

You can also specify a list of frame parameters which apply to just the initial frame, by customizing the variable initial-frame-alist.

If Emacs is compiled to use an X toolkit, frame parameters that specify colors and fonts don’t affect menus and the menu bar, since those are drawn by the toolkit and not directly by Emacs.

Frame appearance and behavior can also be customized through X resources (see X Options and Resources); these override the parameters of the initial frame specified in your init file.

Note that if you are using the desktop library to save and restore your sessions, the frames to be restored are recorded in the desktop file, together with their parameters. When these frames are restored, the recorded parameters take precedence over the frame parameters specified by default-frame-alist and initial-frame-alist in your init file. See Saving Emacs Sessions, for how to avoid that.