Get font face under cursor in Emacs

Question

I've been developing my own custom color theme, and it'd be really useful if I could get a list of font-faces affecting the text under the cursor.

Something like Textmate's show current scope command.

That would save me the trouble of doing M-x customize-face and looking through available options, guessing at which one affects the current word I'm on.

Any ideas?

In case you're looking for the same functionality using the **mouse** cursor (if, e.g., you cannot get `point` on the text in question), see: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/35449/13444 — Braham Snyder, Sep 12 '17 at 01:37

score 190 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 08 '12 at 11:12

190

what-cursor-position with a prefix argument shows the face under point, among other information.

Keyboard shortcut is C-u C-x =

Example output (the face property is shown in the last paragraph):

             position: 5356 of 25376 (21%), column: 4
            character: r (displayed as r) (codepoint 114, #o162, #x72)
    preferred charset: ascii (ASCII (ISO646 IRV))
code point in charset: 0x72
               syntax: w    which means: word
             category: .:Base, L:Left-to-right (strong), a:ASCII, l:Latin, r:Roman
          buffer code: #x72
            file code: #x72 (encoded by coding system undecided-unix)
              display: by this font (glyph code)
    nil:-apple-Monaco-medium-normal-normal-*-12-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 (#x55)

Character code properties: customize what to show
  name: LATIN SMALL LETTER R
  general-category: Ll (Letter, Lowercase)
  decomposition: (114) ('r')

There are text properties here:
  face                 org-level-2
  fontified            t

[back]

edited Dec 08 '12 at 11:12

dbr

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answered Aug 07 '09 at 03:36

jlf

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Which invokes `what-cursor-position`. – viam0Zah Aug 10 '09 at 09:12
hmmm, sometimes it invokes what-cursor-position, sometimes it displays a list of buffer properties (including font). If I get the former behaviour, moving the cursor and repeating brings on the latter. – davidA Aug 02 '10 at 22:06
2

I am so happy I found this, with some unknown combinations of the commands and keystrokes I got `emacs` to display how I liked it and didn't how to get it back in my next restart – Miserable Variable May 17 '13 at 23:53
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It shows the font name on Emacs GUI. On terminal, Emacs is not responsible for setting the font and therefore such information is not available when one does `C-u C-x =` in Emacs running on the terminal, like `emacs -nw file.txt`. – Fernando Basso Mar 02 '18 at 16:51
Cheesy mnemonic "user experience equals"... *groan* – Jeremy Field Mar 02 '23 at 04:52

score 74 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 08 '09 at 18:53

74

M-x describe-face

answered Aug 08 '09 at 18:53

Yoo

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This also includes the nice link making it possible to customize the face under cursor immediately – Ev Dolzhenko Nov 25 '13 at 12:45
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This works well most of the time, but sometimes for reasons I can't figure out sometimes it doesn't suggest the face I'm looking for. For example in eshell when there is ansi color it just says "default". – Samuel Edwin Ward Mar 09 '16 at 16:57
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This shows me a prompt where I can enter something. What would I need to enter, in order to describe the font under cursor? – Zelphir Kaltstahl Oct 02 '17 at 09:31
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This worked for me to customize code block fonts in org-mode. @Zelphir, the text before the prompt showed the face, in my case at least. You might just hit `return`. For example my result read `Describe face (default ‘org-block-background’): `. – Mallory-Erik Feb 18 '18 at 11:11

score 44 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

44

You can define what-face with this code:

(defun what-face (pos)
  (interactive "d")
  (let ((face (or (get-char-property (pos) 'read-face-name)
                  (get-char-property (pos) 'face))))
    (if face (message "Face: %s" face) (message "No face at %d" pos))))

After that,

M-x what-face

will print the face found at the current point.

(Thanks to thedz for pointing out that what-face wasn’t built in.)

edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

Community

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answered Aug 07 '09 at 01:02

Trey Jackson

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This ignores faces set as text properties. If enable `hl-line-mode` you will only see `hl-line` as the face, not the other faces. Consider https://gist.github.com/Wilfred/f7d61b7cdf9fdbb1d11c – Wilfred Hughes Oct 22 '14 at 09:24
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[Karl Fogel](http://stackoverflow.com/users/247145/karl-fogel) pointed out a bug in this code [in a separate answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/20844370/578288): the output message says it’s describing the face at the `pos` parameter, but the reading of the face is actually done at `(point)` rather than at `pos`. – Rory O'Kane Apr 26 '17 at 15:48
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This doesn't works, you can use "M-x describe-face" instead. – luochen1990 Oct 10 '18 at 05:23
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`pos` is not a function; in order make the snippet work, you should replace `(pos)` with `pos` on lines 3 and 4 – cebola May 02 '20 at 17:02

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 07 '09 at 01:20

8

Trey's what face is on the right track. It led me to an email on a mailing list that had this:

(defun what-face (pos)
    (interactive "d")
        (let ((face (or (get-char-property (point) 'read-face-name)
            (get-char-property (point) 'face))))
    (if face (message "Face: %s" face) (message "No face at %d" pos))))

answered Aug 07 '09 at 01:20

thedz

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Duh, forgot it wasn't bundled with Emacs. May I put the source in my answer w/attribution? :) – Trey Jackson Aug 07 '09 at 01:35

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 30 '13 at 17:25

2

There's a bug in the `what-face' code: the function takes "pos" as an argument but then doesn't use it when getting the face -- instead it uses "(point)", even though the message later claims pos in the "No face at %d" case.

answered Dec 30 '13 at 17:25

Karl Fogel

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This would be better placed as a comment on that answer. – Adam Spiers Dec 31 '13 at 12:52
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Even better if it had a fix... +1 for spotting it anyway – rath Mar 11 '14 at 02:03

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 20 '21 at 02:38

I tried @tray function but it didn't work, @thedz definition does work:

(defun what-face (pos)
  (interactive "d")
  (let ((face (or (get-char-property (point) 'read-face-name)
                  (get-char-property (point) 'face))))
    (if face (message "Face: %s" face) (message "No face at %d" pos))))

After some research I found why:

(point) is a function that returns the value of point as an integer.
pos gets the value returned by (interactive "d") which will be the position of point, as an integer.
get-char-property expects a position, in this case given by the function (point).

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 28 '23 at 15:06

0

In emacs-lisp,

(face-at-point t)

which is what M-x describe-face uses.

answered Mar 28 '23 at 15:06

John32ma

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Get font face under cursor in Emacs

7 Answers7

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