My configuration contains the equivalent of (setopt org-agenda-files (directory-files-recursively "~/.local/share/org/todo" ".org$")) My Emacs setup broke today due to the presence of a lockfile inside "~/.local/share/org/todo". I use EXWM, and I show org-agenda on startup: (add-hook 'after-init-hook (lambda () (org-agenda nil "t"))) (setq initial-buffer-choice (lambda () (get-buffer "*Org Agenda*"))) org-agenda-files contained a non-existent file, so org-check-agenda-file attempted to prompt me. For some reason (maybe EXWM didn't fully load), Emacs simply hung without prompting, leaving me with a black screen. The attached patch silently removes lockfiles from org-agenda-files. Thanks! Joseph P.S. I'm not sure how the lockfile ended up there. Maybe I killed Emacs with SIGKILL while one of my agenda files was open and modified in a buffer, and so the lockfile was not deleted?