How to move the cursor word by word in the OS X Terminal

Question

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  larr   rarr  in Cocoa applications does

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · 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    lt -  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  amp  repeat non-sense   Done deal      Enjoy this tip  my fellow PROGRAMMERS

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

Hold down the Option key and click where you d like the cursor to move

User · 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    lt -  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  amp  repeat non-sense   Done deal      Enjoy this tip  my fellow PROGRAMMERS

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

Hold down the Option key and click where you d like the cursor to move

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

Hold down the Option key and click where you d like the cursor to move

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

Hold down the Option key and click where you d like the cursor to move

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I have Alt  larr   rarr  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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  larr  and  rarr  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I have Alt  larr   rarr  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

User · Answer

On Mac OS X - the following keyboard shortcuts work by default  Note that you have to make Option key act like Meta in Terminal preferences  under keyboard tab    alt     F to jump Forward by a word alt     B to jump Backward by a word   I have observed that default emacs key-bindings for simple text navigation seem to work on bash shells  You can use   alt     D to delete a word starting from the current cursor position 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  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   ctrl F to move forward by a char  ctrl B to move backward by a char ctrl W to remove the word backwards from cursor position

User · Answer

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  larr  and  rarr  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

On Mac OS X - the following keyboard shortcuts work by default  Note that you have to make Option key act like Meta in Terminal preferences  under keyboard tab    alt     F to jump Forward by a word alt     B to jump Backward by a word   I have observed that default emacs key-bindings for simple text navigation seem to work on bash shells  You can use   alt     D to delete a word starting from the current cursor position 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  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   ctrl F to move forward by a char  ctrl B to move backward by a char ctrl W to remove the word backwards from cursor position

User · 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    lt -  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  amp  repeat non-sense   Done deal      Enjoy this tip  my fellow PROGRAMMERS

User · Answer

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  larr  and  rarr  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

User · Answer

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  larr  and  rarr  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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 larr  option rarr   Also ctrle will take you to the end of the line and ctrla will take you to the start

User · Answer

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 larr  option rarr   Also ctrle will take you to the end of the line and ctrla will take you to the start

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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 larr  option rarr   Also ctrle will take you to the end of the line and ctrla will take you to the start

User · Answer

On Mac OS X - the following keyboard shortcuts work by default  Note that you have to make Option key act like Meta in Terminal preferences  under keyboard tab    alt     F to jump Forward by a word alt     B to jump Backward by a word   I have observed that default emacs key-bindings for simple text navigation seem to work on bash shells  You can use   alt     D to delete a word starting from the current cursor position 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  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   ctrl F to move forward by a char  ctrl B to move backward by a char ctrl W to remove the word backwards from cursor position

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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  larr  and  rarr  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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  larr  and  rarr  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

User · Answer

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  larr  and  rarr  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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  larr  and  rarr  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I have Alt  larr   rarr  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

User · 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    lt -  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  amp  repeat non-sense   Done deal      Enjoy this tip  my fellow PROGRAMMERS

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I have Alt  larr   rarr  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

User · Answer

I have Alt  larr   rarr  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I have Alt  larr   rarr  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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 larr  option rarr   Also ctrle will take you to the end of the line and ctrla will take you to the start

User · Answer

I have Alt  larr   rarr  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

On Mac OS X - the following keyboard shortcuts work by default  Note that you have to make Option key act like Meta in Terminal preferences  under keyboard tab    alt     F to jump Forward by a word alt     B to jump Backward by a word   I have observed that default emacs key-bindings for simple text navigation seem to work on bash shells  You can use   alt     D to delete a word starting from the current cursor position 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  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   ctrl F to move forward by a char  ctrl B to move backward by a char ctrl W to remove the word backwards from cursor position

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I have Alt  larr   rarr  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

[macos] How to move the cursor word by word in the OS X Terminal

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