I'm using Monokai theme. When I start helm, the current selected line are highlighted in gray. It's not easy to spot,especially with the title information in blue. 
How can I change this gray highlight, say, in purple?
1 Answer
The name of the face helm uses to highlight the selected item is helm-selection. You can change just the background color of any face with set-background-color: (set-background-color 'helm-selection "purple"). You can also useset-face-attribute like this:
(set-face-attribute 'helm-selection nil
:background "purple"
:foreground "black")
if you also want to set other attributes at the same time.
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Thank you for your answer. May I ask why it works well in my
init.elfile; while doesn't work in another file loaded in? I put these code inhelm-c.eland(load "~/.emacs.d/config/helm-c.el"). It doesn't work.– NickCommented Dec 27, 2014 at 9:30 -
You can use
helm-colorsto search for available faces of a package. For example, if you want to search for all Helm's faces, simply type "helm-" in the prompt ofhelm-colors.– Tu DoCommented Dec 27, 2014 at 11:25
C-u C-x =and see what faces are present. Then you can useM-x customize-faceto set color under most circumstances; however, there are a few exceptions to the rule. Sometimes, more than one face will be present at the same location and this is why I recommend seeing what is there before just changing what seems like the most likely choice.M-x customize-facewill actually offer you the faces under point as a default. Not that there's anything wrong with checkingC-x =. :-)