Emacs on st detects 8 colors support, and st supports 256 and 24-bits colors. Opening a file with "TERM=xterm-256colors emacs -q -nw foo.bar" or using "(add-to-list 'term-file-aliases '("st-256color" . "xterm"))" resolves the colors issue but introduces a 5 seconds delay to load the file, if i open like this and after use only "emacs -q -nw foo.bar" the 256 colors work and there's no delay to load the file, but this only works if i used "TERM=xterm-256color" before. st version is 0.8.1. In GNU Emacs 26.1 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.22.30) of 2018-07-05 built on juergen Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. ESC M-x is undefined Configured using: 'configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --libexecdir=/usr/lib --localstatedir=/var --with-x-toolkit=gtk3 --with-xft --with-modules 'CFLAGS=-march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt' CPPFLAGS=-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 LDFLAGS=-Wl,-O1,--sort-common,--as-needed,-z,relro,-z,now' Configured features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG IMAGEMAGICK SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS NOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 MODULES THREADS LIBSYSTEMD LCMS2 Important settings: value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix Major mode: Fundamental Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t buffer-read-only: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message rmc puny seq byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cconv cl-loaddefs cl-lib dired dired-loaddefs format-spec rfc822 mml easymenu mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg epg-config gnus-util rmail rmail-loaddefs mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils time-date elec-pair mule-util tooltip eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel term/x-win x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core term/tty-colors frame cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev obarray minibuffer cl-preloaded nadvice loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote dbusbind inotify lcms2 dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting move-toolbar gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty make-network-process emacs) Memory information: ((conses 16 95003 8111) (symbols 48 20342 2) (miscs 40 78 93) (strings 32 28097 1136) (string-bytes 1 735046) (vectors 16 12230) (vector-slots 8 450577 9328) (floats 8 49 319) (intervals 56 204 11) (buffers 992 12))