GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual

26.6: Finding All Frames

Function: frame-list

The function frame-list returns a list of all the frames that have not been deleted. It is analogous to buffer-list for buffers. The list that you get is newly created, so modifying the list doesn't have any effect on the internals of Emacs.

Function: visible-frame-list

This function returns a list of just the currently visible frames. See Visibility of Frames. (Terminal frames always count as ``visible'', even though only the selected one is actually displayed.)

Function: next-frame &optional frame minibuf

The function next-frame lets you cycle conveniently through all the frames from an arbitrary starting point. It returns the ``next'' frame after frame in the cycle. If frame is omitted or nil, it defaults to the selected frame.

The second argument, minibuf, says which frames to consider:

nil

Exclude minibuffer-only frames.

visible

Consider all visible frames.

0

Consider all visible or iconified frames.

a window

Consider only the frames using that particular window as their minibuffer.

anything else

Consider all frames.

Function: previous-frame &optional frame minibuf

Like next-frame, but cycles through all frames in the opposite direction.

See also next-window and previous-window, in Cyclic Window Ordering.