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I have been using OS X forever. I have been using Emacs forever. I currently use the MacPorts Emacs.app and do (server-start) in my .emacs file. I can't get emacsclient going:

> which emacsclient
/opt/local/bin/emacsclient
>  emacsclient ~/.emacs
emacsclient: can't find socket; have you started the server?
To start the server in Emacs, type "M-x server-start".
emacsclient: No socket or alternate editor.  Please use:

        --socket-name
        --server-file      (or environment variable EMACS_SERVER_FILE)
        --altstrong texternate-editor (or environment variable ALTERNATE_EDITOR)

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  • You might try emacsclient --version and compare that to the version of your Emacs.app.
    – Stefan
    Jul 24, 2016 at 22:13
  • Try running emacsclient -ca "" The 'c' option tells emacs to open a new frame. The 'a' option, when passed the empty string, will cause an instance of the daemon to be started if one is not already running.
    – mwood
    Jul 27, 2016 at 1:54

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Sounds like you are trying to use emacsclient before having started the server.

You have (server-start) in your init file, but did you actually start Emacs normally before trying to use emacsclient? If not, that's probably your problem: that call to server-start was not made before you invoked emacsclient.

An alternative is to use the --daemon command-line option when starting Emacs.

Node Emacs Server of the Emacs manual explains it.

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    Guess I should have clarified that before trying to use emacsclient I open Emacs.app, which has (server-start) in its init file. I have also tried executing server-startmanually after Emacs is running, and it says "server restarted". I am uncomfortable with the daemon approach because I use Emacs.app a lot and hardly ever try to use emacsclient, so even though it doesn't really matter, I would like to keep Emacs.app as the "primary" in this arrangement.
    – Mitchell Model
    Jul 25, 2016 at 16:52

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