29.7 Deleting Frames

A live frame is one that has not been deleted. When a frame is deleted, it is removed from its terminal display, although it may continue to exist as a Lisp object until there are no more references to it.

command delete-frame \&optional frame force

This function deletes the frame frame. The argument frame must specify a live frame (see below) and defaults to the selected frame.

It first deletes any child frame of frame (see Child Frames) and any frame whose delete-before frame parameter (see Frame Interaction Parameters) specifies frame. All such deletions are performed recursively; so this step makes sure that no other frames with frame as their ancestor will exist. Then, unless frame specifies a tooltip, this function runs the hook delete-frame-functions (each function getting one argument, frame) before actually killing the frame. After actually killing the frame and removing the frame from the frame list, delete-frame runs after-delete-frame-functions.

Note that a frame cannot be deleted as long as its minibuffer serves as surrogate minibuffer for another frame (see Minibuffers and Frames). Normally, you cannot delete a frame if all other frames are invisible, but if force is non-nil, then you are allowed to do so.

function frame-live-p frame

This function returns non-nil if the frame frame has not been deleted. The possible non-nil return values are like those of framep. See Frames.

Some window managers provide a command to delete a window. These work by sending a special message to the program that operates the window. When Emacs gets one of these commands, it generates a delete-frame event, whose normal definition is a command that calls the function delete-frame. See Misc Events.

command delete-other-frames \&optional frame

This command deletes all frames on frame’s terminal, except frame. If frame uses another frame’s minibuffer, that minibuffer frame is left untouched. The argument frame must specify a live frame and defaults to the selected frame. Internally, this command works by calling delete-frame with force nil for all frames that shall be deleted.

This function does not delete any of frame’s child frames (see Child Frames). If frame is a child frame, it deletes frame’s siblings only.