Common zsh Keyboard Shortcuts on macOS Catalina

zsh-keyboard-shortucts.md

Common zsh Keyboard Shortcuts on macOS

Navigation

CTRL + A : Move the cursor to the beginning of the line
CTRL + E : Move the cursor to the end of the line
OPTION + Left Arrow : Move the cursor one word backward
OPTION + Right arrow : Move the cursor one word forward
Left Arrow : Move the cursor one character backward
Right Arrow : Move the cursor one character forward

Deletion

CTRL + U : Delete the current line
CTRL + K : Delete from the cursor to the end of the line
ESC + Backspace : Delete one word backward
CTRL + W : Delete one word backward
CTRL + D : Delete one character forward
Fn + Backspace : Delete one character forward
Backspace : Delete one character backward
CTRL + L : Clear the screen

Undo

CTRL + _ : Undo the last change

Process and Shell

CTRL + C : Terminate the running foreground process
CTRL + Z : Suspend the running foreground process
CTRL + D : Exit current shell

History

Up Arrow : Recall the previous command in history
Down Arrow : Recall the next command in history
CTRL + R : Search the command history
CTRL + G : Escape from command search mode
!! : Execute the last typed command
!pw : Execute the last command in history that begins with pw

Auto-completion

TAB : Auto-complete the typed command
TAB TAB : Show list of commands
TAB TAB TAB ... : Cycle through matched commands

List all Keyboard Shortcuts

% bindkey

CTRL + A : Move the cursor to the beginning of the line
CTRL + E : Move the cursor to the end of the line
OPTION + Left Arrow : Move the cursor one word backward
OPTION + Right arrow : Move the cursor one word forward

None of these work for me by default. Tried on both Terminal.app and VS Code's builtin terminal. OPTION + Left Arrow does move the cursor back one word, but it puts it in some edit mode such that if I subsequently press the right arrow key it will delete everything after the cursor (other keys do strange things in this mode as well, for example, pressing e in this mode will jump to either the end of the line or the end of the character). OPTION + Right Arrow doesn't move the cursor and puts zsh into the weird mode. Bash works properly on both terminal emulators. I have not added any keybindings.

CTRL + A just drops ^A characters into the terminal.

When I run cat and then do Option + Left Arrow followed by Option + Right Arrow it prints ^[b^[f.