See errors in buffers

When a syntax check in the current buffer has finished Flycheck reports the results of the check in the current buffer in two ways:

Additionally Flycheck indicates its current state and the number of errors and warnings in the mode line.

The following screenshot illustrates how this looks like in the default Emacs color theme. It shows an info, a warning and an error annotation, from top to bottom. Please also note the fringe indicators on the left side and the emphasized mode line indicator in the bottom right corner:

Flycheck showing info, warning and error annotations

Note

The colours of fringe icons and the whole appearance of the error highlights depend on the active color theme. Although red, orange and green or blue seem to be somewhat standard colours for Flycheck’s annotations across many popular themes, please take a closer look at your color theme if you’re in doubt about the meaning of a Flycheck highlight.

Error levels

All errors that syntax checkers report have a level which tells you the severity of the error. Flycheck has three built-in levels:

error
Severe errors like syntax or type errors.
warning
Potential but not fatal mistakes which you should likely fix nonetheless.
info
Purely informational messages which inform about notable things in the current buffer, or provide additional help to fix errors or warnings.

Each error level has a distinct highlighting and colour which helps you to identify the severity of each error right in the buffer.

Error highlights

Flycheck highlights errors directly in the buffer according to flycheck-highlighting-mode. By default these highlights consist of a coloured wave underline which spans the whole symbol at the error location as in the screenshot above but the highlights are entirely customisable. You can change the extents of highlighting or disable it completely with flycheck-highlighting-mode, or customise Flycheck’s faces to change the style of the underline or use different colours.

defcustom flycheck-highlighting-mode

How Flycheck highlights errors and warnings in the buffer:

nil
Do not highlight anything at all.
lines
Highlight the whole line and discard any information about the column.
columns
Highlight the column of the error if any, otherwise like lines.
symbols
Highlight the entire symbol around the error column if any, otherwise like columns. This is this default.
sexps
Highlight the entire expression around the error column if any, otherwise like columns.

Warning

In some major modes sexps is very slow, because discovering expression boundaries efficiently is hard.

The built-in python-mode is known to suffer from this issue.

Be careful when enabling this mode.

The highlights use the following faces depending on the error level:

defface flycheck-error
defface flycheck-warning
defface flycheck-info

The highlighting face for error, warning and info levels respectively.

Fringe icons

In GUI frames Flycheck also adds indicators to the fringe—the left or right border of an Emacs window that is—to help you identify erroneous lines quickly. These indicators consist of a rightward-pointing double arrow shape coloured in the colour of the corresponding error level.

Note

Flycheck extensions can define custom error levels with different fringe indicators. Furthermore some Emacs distributions like Spacemacs redefine Flycheck’s error levels to use different indicators. If you’re using such a distribution please take a look at its documentation if you’re unsure about the appearance of Flycheck’s indicators.

Note that we discourage you from changing the shape of Flycheck’s fringe indicators.

You can customise the location of these indicators (left or right fringe) with flycheck-indication-mode which also lets you turn off these indicators completely:

defcustom flycheck-indication-mode

How Flycheck indicates errors and warnings in the buffer fringes:

left-fringe or right-fringe
Use the left or right fringe respectively.
nil
Do not indicate errors and warnings in the fringe.

The following faces control the colours of the fringe indicators. However they do not let you change the shape of the indicators—to achieve this you’d have to redefine the error levels with flycheck-define-error-level.

defface flycheck-fringe-error
defface flycheck-fringe-warning
defface flycheck-fringe-info

The icon faces for error, warning and info levels respectively.

Mode line

Like all minor modes Flycheck also has a mode line indicator. You can see it in the bottom right corner of the above screenshot. By default the indicator shows Flycheck’s current state via one of the following texts:

FlyC* Flycheck is checking the buffer currently.
FlyC There are no errors or warnings in the current buffer.
FlyC:3/5 There are three errors and five warnings in the current buffer.
FlyC- Flycheck did not find a syntax checker for the current buffer. Take a look at the list of supported languages and type C-c ! v to see what checkers are available for the current buffer.
FlyC! The last syntax check failed. Inspect the *Messages* buffer look for error messages, and consider reporting a bug.
FlyC? The last syntax check had a dubious result. The definition of a syntax checker may have a bug. Inspect the *Messages* buffer and consider reporting a bug.

You can entirely customise the mode line indicator with flycheck-mode-line:

defcustom flycheck-mode-line

A “mode line construct” for Flycheck’s mode line indicator.

See also

Mode Line Data(elisp)
Documentation of mode line constructs.
flycheck-status-emoji
A Flycheck extension which puts emojis into Flycheck’s mode line indicator.
flycheck-color-mode-line
A Flycheck extension which colours the entire mode line according to Flycheck’s status.

Error thresholds

To avoid flooding a buffers with excessive highlighting, cluttering the appearance and slowing down Emacs, Flycheck takes precautions against syntax checkers that report a large number of errors exceeding flycheck-checker-error-threshold:

defcustom flycheck-checker-error-threshold

The maximum number of errors a syntax checker is allowed to report.

If a syntax checker reports more errors the error information is discarded. To not run into the same issue again on the next syntax check the syntax checker is automatically added to flycheck-disabled-checkers in this case to disable it for the next syntax check.

Clear results

You can explicitly remove all highlighting and indication and all error information from a buffer:

C-c ! C
M-x flycheck-clear

Clear all reported errors, all highlighting and all indication icons from the current buffer.

C-u C-c ! C
C-u M-x flycheck-clear

Like C-c ! C but also interrupt any syntax check currently running. Use this command if you think that Flycheck is stuck.