Yes. We are clearly talking past each other. You need to set the "org-hide" text style (or "face") so that it is the same color as your background. Then the stars will appear invisible. This is explained in the section of the docs I linked to: "The leading stars are not truly replaced by whitespace, they are only fontified with the face org-hide that uses the background color as font color. If you are not using either white or black background, you may have to customize this face to get the wanted effect." Here's one way you might do that. Do M-x apropos and then search for org-hide. Click "org-hide" and then click "customize this face". Then set the foreground color to be the same as your background color. Hope that helps. Josiah On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:27 PM, Chris Henderson wrote: > Hi, > > I'm not sure how to customize this. I have tried different variations of > > #+STARTUP: hidestars > #+STARTUP: odd > #+STARTUP: oddeven > > but they don't seem to be working. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. > > > > On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 3:10 PM, Josiah Schwab wrote: > >> But did you try customizing the org-hide face? >> >> Josiah >> On Feb 28, 2014 7:14 PM, "Chris Henderson" wrote: >> >>> I've added (setq org-hide-leading-stars t) but still getting the leading >>> stars. Thanks. >>> >>> >>> On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 1:45 PM, Josiah Schwab wrote: >>> >>>> You may need to customize the org-hide face. >>>> >>>> See the section "Hiding Leading Stars" at >>>> http://orgmode.org/manual/Clean-view.html >>>> >>>> Josiah >>>> >>>> >>>> On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 6:27 PM, Chris Henderson wrote: >>>> >>>>> I'm trying to setup Org indent mode for cleaner view but the preceding >>>>> starts show up dimmed in grey color. How do I make them totally invisible? >>>>> >>>>> I've put this at the top of the .emacs: >>>>> >>>>> (setq org-startup-indented t) >>>>> (setq org-indent-mode t) >>>>> >>>>> and running emacs version 24.3.1 and org version 8.2.5 from the >>>>> command-line. >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>> >