My emacs daemon for ocaml (I use more than one emacs daemon) starts in a tuareg scratch buffer. I am aware of `initial-major-mode` but this hasn't worked: the scratch is started before `(setq `initial-major-mode 'tuareg-mode)` is evaluated. Since I keep the `initial-buffer-choice` to scratch, I just run `(tuareg-mode)` and my scratch mode is modified as I want. But now, when I kill the scratch, new scratch buffers are not in tuareg mode, so I added a little hack found on stackexchange: (defun prepare-scratch-for-kill () (save-excursion (set-buffer (get-buffer-create "*scratch*")) (tuareg-mode) (add-hook 'kill-buffer-query-functions 'kill-scratch-buffer t))) (defun kill-scratch-buffer () (let (kill-buffer-query-functions) (kill-buffer (current-buffer))) ;; no way, *scratch* shall live (prepare-scratch-for-kill) ;; Since we "killed" it, don't let caller try too nil) (prepare-scratch-for-kill) It works, but now I don't see my magnificent `initial-scratch-message`. I have tried to `(setq initial-major-mode 'tuareg-mode)`, which normally modifies the scratch major mode. But it doesn't, even if I start a new scratch. I would like to do it the proper way, emacs embeded way, but what I have tried doesn't work.