The first one let you know if you are at the 'loading' stage while emacs is starting. It could be useful in case when you start emacs --daemon from startup script and your elisp code intended to ask yes-or-no -- then emacs --daemon will stuck, but if you have some function like `loadingp' then you can defer some questions on after-make-frame-functions for example. Like: (if (and (daemonp) (loadingp)) (add-hook 'after-make-frame-functions ask-my-question) (ask-my-question)) This could be achieved by setting variable like `emacs-loading' to `t' in the beginning of .emacs and setting it to `nil' in the end. But I think there must be standard way for this. Second I want some standard way to filter out emacs daemon's 'frame'(usually it's frame with ('name . "F1") parameter) from `(frame-list)'.