How to change the mark (*) color in dired mode

Question

I am using the cyberpunk-theme, the * are show in light green and is not visible in hightlighted line. I tried to set dired-mark-face to white. Is there other variables I can set?

Answer 1

You shouldn't set face variables directly. You should edit them with set-face-attribute and accompanying commands.

(set-face-attribute face frame &rest args)

• face - the font face you want to edit
• frame - whether to make the edit frame-local (nil means global, otherwise supply a specific frame)
• args - the individual properties to set, in the form :property new-value

In your example, you want to edit dired-mark-face to make it a different colour, and you want the change to be global:

(set-face-attribute 'diredp-flag-mark nil 
                    :foreground "white")

You can view the full documentation here. There are also standalone commands to set individual face attributes, such as set-face-foreground. You can view them here.

If you see a font you would like to change, you can get information about it by hovering over it and calling the command M-x describe-face. The prompt will default to the face under point. You can also get more verbose information by calling M-x what-cursor-position

Answer 2

You should set the face, not the variable:

(set-face-foreground 'dired-mark "#fff")