I'm trying to map ⌘+Delete (backspace) to delete to the beginning of the line (like it works in browsers and text editors) in iTerm2 and I'm unable to find a working escape code for it. I tried 1K (^[1K) based on what I read in Wikipedia. It just prints a "K".
Edit: I found Ctrl+U. Now to find out how to map it. Maybe Hex code 21 (U being 21st letter), so 0x15?
I got it. I have no idea why Hex Code mappings in iTerm2 produce the associated Ctrl+key mappings, but they do. No idea what 0x00 means, either, as it's not assigned to A as might be expected. (though I do believe Unix has its own conventions relating to treating null bytes -- we have e.g. xargs accepting a null byte delimiting format from find for example -- It would be neat if we can bind this to a hotkey with iTerm2)
I was able to find that Ctrl+U does nearly the exact task I want (it deletes the entire line rather than deleting only what is before cursor, but whatever... Ctrl+Y as a bonus can bring it all back). Then I curiously saw that I had hex codes 0x1 and 0x5 mapped to ^A and ^E respectively, for my Cmd+Left and Cmd+Right... so 0x15 is for ^U!
For Mac OS, most editor share the common shortcut ⌘ + Delete: delete to start of the line, in iTerm2 we can switch to this key configuration
Mapping hex code 0x15 to ⌘ + ←Delete in most shells deletes the entire line (content to the left and right of the cursor). While sometimes not as compatible, I find that mapping:
⌘+←Delete to Send Hex Codes:
0x18 0x7f
performs the desired functionality. If you're running ZSH, you'll likely also need to add this to your .zshrc file:
$ echo 'bindkey "^X\\x7f" backward-kill-line' >> ~/.zshrc
as by default ZSH doesn't map backward-kill-line to anything.
Furthermore, you can also delete everything to the right of your cursor by mapping:
⌘+fn+←Delete or ⌘+Delete→ to Send Hex Codes:
0x0b
I wrote a comprehensive guide to adding most of OSX's standard keybinding to your terminal here
In OSX, ⌥+⌫ and ⌘+⌫ are the shortcuts for deleting a word and deleting a line respectively. ⌘+ ← and ⌘+ → are for going to the beginning and end of lines. By default, iTerm2 isn't configured this way, and there are a lot of misleading guides online. The following is what I've found to work on my machine.
Open the preferences (⌘+,) and go to the Keys tab.
Add a global shortcut key, and just type in your shortcut
In the Action dropdown, select Send Hex Code
The hex codes for...
Deleting a word: 0x17.
Deleting a line: 0x15.
Moving to the beginning of the line: 0x01.
Moving to the end of the line: 0x05.
Just open a new tab, and it should work!
Here is a screenshot, for clarity:
I hope this may help you
map ⌥ <- Delete to Send Hex Codes: 0x1B 0x08
I had test for it, and it is correct.
18.09.2013 update
this delete one word, not a line.
As pointed ^U deletes the line. You can easily remap the command by using Better Touch Tool.
It also has cool features for automation, mouse, pad and keyboard mapping. Also includes a window feature for smart borders.
On iTerm2 you can set the exact same shortcuts of your OS. In this case, as the default shortcut to delete a line on Mac OS is ⌘+Delete (backspace), you can do so.
To set the default keybindings of iTerm you have to:
Go to Preferences (or ⌘+,)
Profiles
Keys
Key Mappings
Presets...
Select the "Natural text editing" option
The location has changed. In order to enable natural editing go to:
Preferences -> Profile -> Keys -> Load Presets... -> and select Natural Text Editing
For more info and tweeks go https://blog.arturofm.com/install-iterm-terminal-emulator-on-macos/
Related
I am using iTerm2 on OSX, and I am using an external keyboard with a Del (not to be confused with Backspace). The Del key works fine in OSX but in Terminal and iTerm, it inserts "~" instead of deleting forwards one character. This is easily fixable in Terminal, but in iTerm, there is no key binding or escape sequence that allows me to delete a character to the right of the cursor (the equivalent Unix command is Ctrl D). Is there any way I can simulate deleting forwards one character in iTerm?
If you are using zsh, try adding these lines to your ~/.zshrc file, then close and reopen the terminal:
bindkey "^[[3~" delete-char
bindkey "^[3;5~" delete-char
These should enable your delete key on any keyboard, without manual keyboard mappings to the hex command 0x04, which has the problem that it closes the session if the input is empty.
Why this? Because it seems that zsh doesn't read /etc/inputrc with the key bindings by default.
Like Gajus said, using Ctrl-D to delete one backspace forward also closes the terminal tab if there's no input which can be very frustrating.
I am using zsh, but adding the lines ricpacca suggested to .zshrc didn't work for me.
What I did instead is to map Ctrl-Delete to send the hex codes "0x06 0x08".
0x06 translates to "move one character forward", and 0x08 is just a normal backspace.
Thought I'd share my solution for any other frustrated iTerm2 users that scoured the internet to no avail.
You can add a iTerm Keyboard Mapping in Global Preferences or a Profile-based one for the key to send a Ctrl-D (0x04)
i.e: Here I am mapping Ctrl-Delete to Erase (Ctrl-D/0x04) like an Extended Keyboard's Del key:
I found out that the Bash shell supports a type of autocompletion that is different from the "traditional" autocompletion, where all possibilities get listed on the following line.
With the "traditional" autocompletion, if I type ch and then press the Tab key, I get something like:
$ ch
chacl chgrp chmod chown chvt
But if I add the following line to my /etc/inputrc (which remaps the Tab key to the built-in menu-complete function):
Tab: menu-complete
then the behavior of the shell changes: the word to be completed is replaced "inline" with a single match from the list of possible completions, and if I press the Tab key again, the word gets replaced with the next match.
I found this useful, but I still wanted to keep the traditional autocompletion and have it bound to the key combination Ctrl + Tab. So I added the following line to my /etc/inputrc file, according to what the readline library documentation suggests:
Ctrl-Tab: complete
However, adding this line only seems to make both Tab and Ctrl-Tab call the traditional complete function.
Does anyone know what I am doing wrong?
Thanks in advance!
To start with, I'm not a massive expert in this area, but I think I can answer your question. First of all, while you are using Bash, Bash is a shell which interprets keyboard commands that it receives from a terminal / console. While you are informing Bash how to react to specific key combinations in the inputrc file, your Terminal determines precisely which character is 'sent' to the Shell before the inputrc file even enters the equation.
Unfortunately, on my system (granted, it's OSX - but I don't think this is strange behaviour when compared to Linux), both Tab and Ctrl-Tab send the same keyboard input to the shell. Infact, both Tab and Ctrl-Tab send a Ctrl-I command to the shell, and indeed, if I enter Ctrl-I when using the terminal, it performs the completion as if I hit Tab.
The software (installed on most Linux systems by default), showkey will tell you what keys the shell is receiving when you press specific keyboard inputs as you push them.
Anyway, my suggestion to you is to use Shift-Tab, which does appear to send it's own key-code to the shell. Shift-Tab on my computer shows up (using showkey) as '<ESC>[Z', which I think is pretty standard across the board. As such, your inputrc file with the following bindings should allow you to use shift-tab instead of ctrl-tab to achieve what you desire:
Tab: menu-complete
"\e[Z": complete
The \e in the second binding represents the escape character, and the [Z are simply the characters as shown using showkey. You can get a similar effect on OSX by simply using cat, running cat from within a terminal and pressing Shift-Tab will show you "^[[Z", where ^[ represents the escape character and the other characters are as before.
I know this doesn't resolve your question precisely, but as I don't think you are able to use Ctrl-Tab as a key combination, without re-mapping Ctrl-Tab to another keybinding within your terminal (more likely to be easier if you are using a GUI terminal), this is likely as close as you can get without significant effort!
I have ShiftTab bound to menu-complete-backward, so it goes back one step if I skipped the right completion, and I've mapped Ctrlq to complete, so if there are several possible completions I hit Ctrlq to list them without having to cycle through them.
# Make Tab cycle between possible completions
# Cycle forward: Tab
# Cycle backward: Shift-Tab
TAB: menu-complete
"\e[Z": menu-complete-backward
# Make C-q display the list of possible completions
Control-q: complete
# Display the list of matches when no further completion is possible
set show-all-if-unmodified on
Edit: Ctrlq is bound to quoted-insert by default, that is, it tells the shell to take the next key literally. quoted-insert is also bound to Ctrlv, so you don't lose that functionality if you rebind Ctrlq. Anyway, I've found that AltESC also works, by default, for showing the possible completions (as far as I can tell it is equivalent to TAB); note that it may be seized by Gnome, then either double press ESC or rebind "Switch windows directly" in Settings → Devices → Keyboard → Navigation.
The following should achieve what you're looking for (if I understand correctly!)
In your .inputrc
# display all possible matches for an ambiguous pattern at first tab
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
# next tab(s) will cycle through matches
TAB: menu-complete
# shift tab cycles backward
"\e[Z": menu-complete-backward
Where to start, if you can or cant do this is dependent your keyboard and your drivers and there isn't one catch all answer. Each key press and release generates a sequenced key pair (key down and release) (scancode) these codes are then translated by the kernel into keycodes for example on my laptop keyboard 0x3a 0xba are translated to keycode 15 (down and up) these are then translated into actions such as return letter c a / you can assign actions to keysyms using the keycode/hex/binary/octal notation which codes match which letters is determined by the kernel translation table which is fairly standardized, however the first part signal that's translated to keycodes is different for most keyboards.
Continuing with the earlier example for me shift tab (and alt and control and any combination) produce keycode 15 however in hex it produces 0x2a 0x2a 0x2a 0x2a 0x2a 0x2a 0x2a 0x2a 0x2a 0x2a 0x2a and this is because shift alt and control are special keys (modifiers) these multiply out against the keycodes and fill out the dumpkeys table the kernel is limited to the number of assignments as well this is determined by your choice of keymap and shares resources with your terminal colors (if your char set its defined above the threshold it limits your terminal color scope). And this all goes out the window if your in an xserver and has a whole new system. Most of these things can be changed,modified and manipulated by the user and programs installed. My point to all this is to emphasize that there is no catch all for the mapping of the tab key and its going to vary keyboard drivers to kbd drivers (now if you find a solution that happens to work for you excellent :)) but chances are it won't be portable and might not work if you change keyboards and might not translate between xserver and tui. What i recommend is learning the steps to modify your kbd on the go.
will give you the decimal octal hex notation for a key press on the same line
--full-table -1 >> keytable
will give you a documented with your full list of keycode->keysym pairing in a format that will give you a better picture of your layout and from there you can either use loadkey to change a keys value or ad an entry in .inputrc or your main rc file. You can also create a custom key.map file.
Further escape sequence translation is determined by the "$TERM" variable and each virtual terminal emulator can be different
infocmp "$TERM"
will give you a list of your terminal escape sequences
Resources:
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man4/console_codes.4.html
https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/html_node/Input-Translation.html
http://kbd-project.org/docs/scancodes/scancodes.html
https://www.vt100.net/
So to sum up.
Your keyboard drivers
Your kemap choice
Your virtual terminal emulator
and your kernel
form the backbone of remapping dificult keys (tab/s-tab/a-tab)
I'm not sure Ctrl-Tab is a real character; my terminal, for instance, ignores the combination. I think the only way to use Ctrl-Tab is to use your terminal emulator to map it to some otherwise unused escape sequence, then bind that sequence to complete.
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I can see that Ctrl+left/right jumps to the beginning/end of line. How to change this to Cmd+left/right arrow?
Add in iTerm2 the following Profile Shortcut Keys
FOR
ACTION
SEND
⌘ ←
"SEND HEX CODE"
0x01
⌘ →
"SEND HEX CODE"
0x05
⌥ ←
"SEND ESC SEQ"
b
⌥ →
"SEND ESC SEQ"
f
Here is a visual for those who need it
To jump between words and start/end of lines in iTerm2 pick one of the two solutions below.
1. Simple solution (recommended)
Open Preferences
Click "Profile" tab
Select a profile in the list on the left (eg "Default")
Click "Keys" tab
Click "Key Mappings" tab (if it exists)
Click the "Presets" dropdown and select "Natural Text Editing"
Note: if you have several profiles (f.e. Default and Hotkey Window) and want the same modification to be applied for all profiles, use these steps instead:
Click "Keys" tab
Choose "Key Bindings"
2. Mapping keys manually (Advanced)
If you don't want to use the "Natural Text Editing" preset mentioned above, you can map the keys you need manually:
Open Preferences
Click "Profile" tab
Select a profile in the list on the left (eg "Default")
Click "Keys" tab
Click "Key Mappings" tab (if it exists)
Click the [+] iconjuimp
Add the shortcuts from the table below
SHORTCUT
DESCRIPTION
ACTION
SEND
⌘ ←
Jump left to beginning of line
"SEND HEX CODE"
0x01
⌘ →
Jump right to end of line
"SEND HEX CODE"
0x05
⌘ ← Delete
Delete line
"SEND HEX CODE"
0x15
⌥ ←
Jump left to beginning of word
"SEND HEX CODE"
0x1b 0x62
⌥ →
Jump right to end of word
"SEND HEX CODE"
0x1b 0x66
⌥ ← DELETE
Delete word
"SEND HEX CODE"
0x1b 0x08
⌘ z
Undo
"SEND HEX CODE"
0x1f
Note
If keyboard bindings already exists for the shortcuts above, they must be removed for the new ones to take effect.
I see there's a lot of good answers already, but this should provide the closest to native OSX functionality as possible in more than just your shell. I verified that this works in ZSH, Bash, node, python -i, iex and irb/pry sessions (using rb-readline gem for readline, but should work for all).
Open the iTerm preferences ⌘+, and navigate to the Profiles tab (the Keys tab can be used, but adding keybinding to your profile allows you to save your profile and sync it to multiple computers) and keys sub-tab and enter the following:
Delete all characters left of the cursor
⌘+←Delete Send Hex Codes:
0x15 More compatible, but functionality sometimes is to delete the entire line rather than just the characters to the left of the curser. I personally use this and then overwrite my zsh bindkey for ^U to delete only stuff to the left of the cursor (see below).
or
0x18 0x7f Less compatible, doesn't work in node and won't work in zsh by default, see below to fix zsh (bash/irb/pry should be fine), performs desired functionality when it does work.
Delete all characters right of the cursor
⌘+fn+←Delete or ⌘+Delete→ Send Hex Codes: 0x0b
Delete one word to left of cursor
⌥+←Delete Send Hex Codes:
0x1b 0x08 Breaks in Elixir's IEX, seems to work fine everywhere else
or
0x17 Works everywhere, but doesn't stop at normal word breaks in IRB and will instead delete until it sees a literal space.
Delete one word to right of cursor
⌥+fn←Delete or ⌥+Delete→ Send Hex Codes: 0x1b 0x64
Move cursor to the front of line
⌘+← Send Hex Codes: 0x01
Move cursor to the end of line
⌘+→ Send Hex Codes: 0x05
Move cursor one word left
⌥+← Send Hex Codes: 0x1b 0x62
Move cursor one word right
⌥+→ Send Hex Codes: 0x1b 0x66
Undo
⌘+z Send Hex Codes: 0x1f
Redo typically not bound in bash, zsh or readline, so we can set it to a unused hexcode which we can then fix in zsh
⇧+⌘+Z or ⌘+y Send Hex Codes: 0x18 0x1f
Now how to fix any that don't work
For zsh, you can setup binding for the not yet functional
⌘+←Delete and ⇧+⌘+Z/⌘+y by running:
# changes hex 0x15 to delete everything to the left of the cursor,
# rather than the whole line
$ echo 'bindkey "^U" backward-kill-line' >> ~/.zshrc
# binds hex 0x18 0x7f with deleting everything to the left of the cursor
$ echo 'bindkey "^X\\x7f" backward-kill-line' >> ~/.zshrc
# adds redo
$ echo 'bindkey "^X^_" redo' >> ~/.zshrc
# reload your .zshrc for changes to take effect
$ source ~/.zshrc
I'm unable to find a solution for adding redo in bash or readline, so if anyone know a solution for either of those, please comment below and I'll try to add them in.
For anyone looking for the lookup table on how to convert key sequences to hex, I find this table very helpful.
In iTerm 3.0.12 you can switch to Natural Text Editing preset:
iTerm → Preferences → Profiles → Keys
Warning As it is a preset, it can override the keys you have binded before. So it's better to save your current key bindings before applying a preset.
For quick reference of anyone who wants to go to the end of line or start of line in iTerm2, the above link
http://hackaddict.blogspot.com/2007/07/skip-to-next-or-previous-word-in-iterm.html
notes that in iTerm2:
Ctrl+A, jumps to the start of the line, while
Ctrl+E, jumps to the end of the line.
Follow the tutorial you listed above for setting up your key preferences in iterm2.
Create a new shorcut key
Choose "Send escape sequence" as the action
Then, to set cmd-left, in the text below that:
Enter [H for line start
OR
Enter [F for line end
I used Travis answer and I created a dynamic profile you can import based on its instructions.
GabLeRoux/iterm2-macos-dynamic-profile
Instructions are in the readme and it's a lot faster to import this than it is to add them all manually. I made this an answer as per #gooli's request because this was hidden in a comment. Hope you enjoy this 🍻
Just to help out anyone that is having the same issue but specifically using Zsh shell with iTerm 2. It turns out that Zsh doesn't read /etc/inputrc properly, and so fails to understand any key bindings you set up through the preferences!
To fix this, you need to add some key bindings to your .zshrc file, such as:
# key bindings
bindkey "\e[1~" beginning-of-line
bindkey "\e[4~" end-of-line
Note the backslashes in the example above before the "e", the linked article does not show them, so add them into your .zshrc file when adding bindings.
The only things that work for for moving to the beginning and end of line are
⌘← "SEND ESC SEQ" OH - to move to the beginning of line
⌘→ "SEND ESC SEQ" OF - to move to the end of line
The old fashion emacs bindings can still work in iterm2 and os x terminal:
Preferences -> Profiles -> Keys (sub tab in profiles)
Set Left/Right option <kbd>⌥</kbd> key acts as +Esc (similar in os x terminal)
This should enable alt-f and alt-b for moving words by words. (Still ctrl-a and ctrl-e always work as usual)
If set as meta those old bindings will work while some iterm2 bindings unavailable.
As Explains in here, you can do it with a simple steps:
By default, word jumps (option + → or ←) and word deletions (option +
backspace) do not work. To enable these, go to "iTerm → Preferences →
Profiles → Keys → Load Preset... → Natural Text Editing → Boom! Head
explodes"
bind -p will show a list of bound escaped keys in your shell, that might help giving you more ideas / search terms.
explained in https://aaronaddleman.com/articles/hexcodes-and-iterm/
you can use xxd -psd to get key hex code.
For me, the following combination worked:
Key
Action
Esc+
End result
⌘←
Send Escape Sequence
a
Send ^[ a
⌘→
Send Escape Sequence
e
Send ^[ e
In the mac terminal application there is a setting (preferences -> keyboard) that lets you set "use option as meta key". This is useful as a lot of unix boxes use bash as default shell and that has emacs keybindings M-f and M-b that let you skip words.
Problem is that on a Mac with a UK keyboard the # symbol is tricky to get to - normally it can be typed with alt-3, but not if you are in a terminal and alt=meta.
Anyone have a nice way round this?
I am using zsh and the following saved my day:
bindkey -s '^[3' \#
Set your keyboard language ( System Preferences->International->InputMenu ) to Australian
It is the same as UK except shift-3 gives #. You do lose the pound sign but if I do currency I use the ISO three character code GBP
The Australian layout is identical as mentioned except # is mapped to Shift 3 and £ is mapped to Alt 3.
Swap to Aus and the swap your ALT behaviour. This has annoyed me for while especially as it is in a non UK position to start with.
Earlier today I stumbled on a great solution to this on Graeme Sutherland's blog so thought I'd summarise it here in case it disappears.
If you want to stick with the built-in Terminal and don't want to lose the £ sign, you can use Ukelele roll your own keyboard layout to switch the section (§) key for hash instead. Quite a handy location for typing '#!' too :)
The keymap file Graeme created is here, but if you want to make your own you can simply take the British one as a base it's pretty straightforward to create the new keymap file.
Copy your new keymap file to ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts
Go to System Preferences - Language & Text - Input Sources
Scroll down to 'British with # for §' (or whatever you put as its name in Ukelele) and check the box
Check 'Show Input menu in menu bar'
Click on the flag in your menu bar at the top of the screen and choose your new input source
This input source can then be used in all apps, or just the ones you want it for.
I appreciate this and the linked question are quite old but thought this might help someone else.
ESC is another meta shortcut :). You don't have to keep pressing it though.
So in your situation, you might just need to press ESC once, and then press alt-3.
See image to get the details as to how to setup a shortcut in your terminal and fly free
I'm using iTerm2 and I was having this problem. With iTerm2 you can use the left alt key as a meta key, and the right as a normal key. So ralt-3 does the # key.
Based on ericteubert answer for zsh for bash you bind the key, I've added this to my .bash_profile:
bind '"\e3":"#"'
For vim you can add the following to your .vimrc
inoremap <ESC>3 #
I know the combination Ctrl+A to jump to the beginning of the current command, and Ctrl+E to jump to the end.
But is there any way to jump word by word, like Alt+←/→ in Cocoa applications does?
Out of the box you can use the quite bizarre Esc+F to move to the beginning of the next word and Esc+B to move to the beginning of the current word.
On macOS (all versions) the following keyboard shortcuts work by default.
ALT+F to jump Forward by a word.
ALT+B to jump Backward by a word.
Note that you have to make set the Option key to act like the Meta key. You can do this in Terminal by accessing preferences (CMD+,) and selecting Profiles -> Keyboard. In iTerm2 Pselect rofiles -> Keys -> General and select "Option key as Esc+."
Additionally some Emacs-style key bindings for simple text navigation seem to work on bash shells. You can use:
CTRL+F to move forward by a char
CTRL+B to move backward by a char
CTRL+A to jump to start of the line
CTRL+E to jump to end of the line
CTRL+K to kill the line starting from the cursor position
ALT+D to delete a word starting from the current cursor position
CTRL+W to remove the word backwards from cursor position
CTRL+Y to paste text from the kill buffer
CTRL+R to reverse search for commands you typed in the past from your history.
CTRL+S to forward search (works in ZSH for me but not bash)
Here's how you can do it
By default, the Terminal has these shortcuts to move (left and right) word-by-word:
esc+B (left)
esc+F (right)
You can configure alt+← and → to generate those sequences for you:
Open Terminal preferences (cmd+,);
At Settings tab, select Keyboard and double-click ⌥ ← if it's there, or add it if it's not.
Set the modifier as desired, and type the shortcut key in the box: esc+B, generating the text \033b (you can't type this text manually).
Repeat for word-right (esc+F becomes \033f)
Alternatively, you can refer to this blog post over at textmate:
http://blog.macromates.com/2006/word-movement-in-terminal/
Switch to iTerm2. It's free and much nicer than plain old terminal. Also it has a lot more options for customization, like keyboard shortcuts.
Also I love that you can use cmd and 1-9 to switch between tabs. Try it and you will never go back to regular terminal :)
How to set up custom keyboard preferences in iterm2
Install iTerm2
Launch and then go to preference pane.
Choose the keyboard profiles tab
You will either need to copy the profile to something new and then delete the arrow key shortcuts such as ^+ Right/Left or if you don't care about a backup just delete them from the default profile.
Next make sure your modified profile is selected (starred)
Now choose the keyboard tab (very top row)
Click on the plus button to add a new keyboard shortcut
In the first box type CMD+Left arrow
In the second box choose "send escape code"
In the third box type the letter B
Repeat with desired key combinations. escape+B moves one word to the left, escape+f moves one word to the right.
you may also wish to set up cmd+d to delete the word in front of the cursor with escape+d
I often hit the wrong button (cmd / control / alt) with an arrow key and so i have my arrow key combinations with those buttons all set to jump forward and back words, but please do what fits you best.
Actually there is a much better approach. Hold option ( alt on some keyboards) and press the arrow keys left or right to move by word. Simple as that.
option←
option→
Also ctrle will take you to the end of the line and ctrla will take you to the start.
I have Alt+←/→ working: open Preferences » Settings » Keyboard, set the entry for option cursor left to send string to shell: \033b, and set option cursor right to send string to shell: \033f. You can also use this for other Control key combinations.
Use Natural Text Editing preset!
Essentially it binds, among other key sequences, Option + LeftArrow to ^[b sequence and Option + RightArrow to ^[f
This works in fish and bash, as well as in psql terminal.
Actually it depends on what shell you use, however most shells have similar bindings. The bindings you are referring to (e.g. Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E) are bindings you will find in many other programs and they are used for ages, BTW also work in most UI apps.
Here's a look of default bindings for Bash:
Most Important Bash Keyboard Shortcuts
Please also note that you can customize them. You need to create a file, name as you wish, I named mine .bash_key_bindings and put it into my home directory. There you can set some general bash options and you can also set key bindings. To make sure they are applied, you need to modify a file named ".bashrc" that bash reads in upon start-up (you must create it, if it does not exist) and make the following call there:
bind -f ~/.bash_key_bindings
~ means home directory in bash, as stated above, you can name the file as you like and also place it where you like as long as you feed the right path+name to bind.
Let me show you some excerpts of my .bash_key_bindings file:
set meta-flag on
set input-meta on
set output-meta on
set convert-meta off
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
set bell-style none
set print-completions-horizontally off
These just set a couple of options (e.g. disable the bell; this can be all looked up on the bash webpage).
"A": self-insert
"B": self-insert
"C": self-insert
"D": self-insert
"E": self-insert
"F": self-insert
"G": self-insert
"H": self-insert
"I": self-insert
"J": self-insert
These make sure that the characters alone just do nothing but making sure the character is "typed" (they insert themselves on the shell).
"\C-dW": kill-word
"\C-dL": kill-line
"\C-dw": backward-kill-word
"\C-dl": backward-kill-line
"\C-da": kill-line
This is quite interesting. If I hit Ctrl+D alone (I selected d for delete), nothing happens. But if I then type a lower case w, the word to the left of the cursor is deleted. If I type an upper case, however, the word to the right of the cursor is killed. Same goes for l and L regarding the whole line starting from the cursor. If I type an "a", the whole line is actually deleted (everything before and after the cursor).
I placed jumping one word forward on Ctrl+F and one word backward on Ctrl+B
"\C-f": forward-word
"\C-b": backward-word
As you can see, you can make a shortcut, that leads to an action immediately, or you can make one, that just inits a character sequence and then you have to type one (or more) characters to cause an action to take place as shown in the example further above.
So if you are not happy with the default bindings, feel free to customize them as you like. Here's a link to the bash manual for more information.
Hold down the Option key and click where you'd like the cursor to move
If you happen to be a Vim user, you could try bash's vim mode. Run this or put it in your ~/.bashrc file:
set -o vi
By default you're in insert mode; hit escape and you can move around just like you can in normal-mode Vim, so movement by word is w or b, and the usual movement keys also work.
If you check Use option as meta key in the keyboard tab of the preferences, then the default emacs style commands for forward- and backward-word and ⌥F (Alt+F) and ⌥B (Alt+B) respectively.
I'd recommend reading From Bash to Z-Shell. If you want to increase your bash/zsh prowess!
As of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Terminal maps Option-Left/Right Arrow to Esc-b/f by default, so this is now built-in for bash and other programs that use these emacs-compatible keybindings.
In Bash, these are bound to Esc-B and Esc-F.
Bash has many, many more keyboard shortcuts; have a look at the output of bind -p to see what they are.
Under iterm2's Preferences > Profile > Keys, you click the + below Key Mappings and record a new shortcut. For Action, select Send Escape Sequence and type b or f for backwards and forwards respectively.
When I tried to record one for (Ctrl+←), I noticed in the Keyboard Shortcut field that the arrow never showed up. Turns out I had to disable the default mac's System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Mission Control shorcuts first to get things to work, as they'll override iterm2's default shortcuts. Should be true for the standard terminal app, too.
For some reason, my terminal's option+arrow weren't working. To fix this on macOS 10.15.6, I opened the terminal app's preferences, and had to set the bindings.
Option-left = \033b
Option-right = \033e
For some reason, the option-right I had was set up to be \033f. Now that it's fixed, I can freely skip around words in the termianl again.
Here's the CLI way to do so, verified it works on bash.
Add the following to your ~/.inputrc:
# macOS Option + Left/Right arrow keys to move the cursor wordwise
"\e\e[C": forward-word
"\e\e[D": backward-word
The advantage of this method is that it is terminal application agnostic - doesn't matter whether you use Terminal.app, iTerm2, or any other application.
Inspiration got from this other answer.
New answer for iTerm2 Build 3.3.4 users:
Step 1: (macOS X) System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts tab > Select Mission Control (left panel) > Uncheck shortcuts that labeled as "Move left a space" and "Move right a space"
Step 2: (iTerm2 Build 3.3.4) Preferences > Profiles > Select * Default (left panel) > Keys tab > Delete both "⌥->" and "⌥<-" entries > Set both "Left Option (⌥) Key:" and "Right Option (⌥) Key:" to Esc+
No messing around with shell profiles, no messing around with inferior masOS (default) Terminal, no awkwards Esc+F/B, rinse & repeat non-sense.
Done deal!!!
Enjoy this tip, my fellow PROGRAMMERS!
As answered previously, you can add set -o vi in your ~/.bashrc to use vi/vim key bindings, or else you can add following part in .bashrc to move with Ctrl and arrow keys:
# bindings to move 1 word left/right with ctrl+left/right in terminal, just some apple stuff!
bind '"\e[5C": forward-word'
bind '"\e[5D": backward-word'
# bindings to move 1 word left/right with ctrl+left/right in iTerm2, just some apple stuff!
bind '"\e[1;5C": forward-word'
bind '"\e[1;5D": backward-word'
To start effect of these lines of code, either source ~/.bashrc or start a new terminal session.
Just check the "Use Option as meta key" option in Terminal > Preferences > Settings > [profile] > Keyboard, as mentioned here already by #cris-page.
Note however, that in macOS Catalina (10.15) and newer, zsh becomes the default shell for newly added users: its default configuration considers only whitespaces as word-boundaries, whereas the old bash makes meta-left/right jump to the nearest non-alphanumerical character (similar to B/W as opposed to b/w for those familiar with vim):
v----v- bash jumps here
$ vim some-folder/what.txt_<- jump left twice from here
^---^- zsh jumps here by default
(similar motions are true for meta-backspace as well)
There are more than one ways to make zsh command line editor navigation work similarly to bash's - here is one such method:
# Place in your profile init script, e.g. `~/.zshrc`
autoload -U select-word-style
select-word-style bash