This post is the fifth part of the series Dired as Default File Manager.

Since version 24, Emacs offers a powerful tool to create and maintain custom theme called customize-create-theme. It provides you an visual interface for interacting with all those faces as well as previewing color in Emacs. You can even copy from other theme and then customize it a bit to make it yours.

If you haven’t known about Emacs 24 Color Theming yet, have a look at this post Color Theming in Emacs 24. This post just lists some useful faces that you can customize for Dired.

For Dired

• dired-directory: Face used for subdirectories.
• dired-header: Face used for directory headers.
• dired-mark: Face used for dired marks.
• dired-flagged: Face used for files flagged for deletion.
• dired-marked: Face used for marked files.
• dired-perm-write: Face used to highlight permissions of group- and world-writable files.
• dired-symlink: Face used for symbolic links.

For Dired+

• diredp-date-time: Face used for date and time in dired buffers.
• diredp-deletion: Face used for deletion flags (D) in dired buffers.
• diredp-deletion-file-name: Face used for names of deleted files in dired buffers.
• diredp-dir-heading: Face used for directory headings in dired buffers.
• diredp-file-name: Face used for file names (without suffixes) in dired buffers.
• diredp-file-suffix: Face used for file suffixes in dired buffers (file extension).

There are many more faces that you can explore in Emacs Dired.

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