Hello ! Just upgraded to High Sierra Beta 5 and now Emacs shows my files black on black. This bug report was originaly posted to https://github.com/caldwell/build-emacs/issues/65 ; on High Sierra Beta 4 i didn't have this problem using brew emacs has exact the same problem After removing all .emacs* it's kind of more visible but i see the general cause in Messages Warning: arch-dependent data dir '/Users/build/workspace/Emacs-Multi-Build/label/mavericks/emacs-source/nextstep/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/libexec/': No such file or directory Unable to load color "grey75" Unable to load color "grey90" Unable to load color "grey20" Unable to load color "grey75" [2 times] Unable to load color "grey95" Unable to load color "grey90" Unable to load color "grey20" Unable to load color "gray60" Unable to load color "gray80" Unable to load color "gray40" For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. Unable to load color "grey75" Unable to load color "RoyalBlue3" Unable to load color "medium blue" Mark set The status row, which seems to use this colors, is completely black. I googled, and found older similiar problems the only solution for me now is : rm ~/Library/Colors/Emacs.clr rm -rf .emacs.d/ before starting emacs. Then colors seem ok. closing (with autosave) and restarting, colors are messed up again. Starting emacs with my temporary solution : Restarting emacs : Thank you for your help, Mario