An iTerm2 Cheatsheet

iterm2.md

Tabs and Windows

Function	Shortcut
New Tab	⌘ + T
Close Tab or Window	⌘ + W (same as many mac apps)
Go to Tab	⌘ + Number Key (ie: ⌘2 is 2nd tab)
Go to Split Pane by Direction	⌘ + Option + Arrow Key
Cycle iTerm Windows	⌘ + backtick (true of all mac apps and works with desktops/mission control)
Splitting
Split Window Vertically (same profile)	⌘ + D
Split Window Horizontally (same profile)	⌘ + Shift + D (mnemonic: shift is a wide horizontal key)
Moving
Move a pane with the mouse	⌘ + Alt + Shift and then drag the pane from anywhere
Fullscreen
Fullscreen	⌘+ Enter
Maximize a pane	⌘ + Shift + Enter (use with fullscreen to temp fullscreen a pane!)
Resize Pane	Ctrl + ⌘ + Arrow (given you haven't mapped this to something else)
Less Often Used By Me
Go to Split Pane by Order of Use	⌘ + ] , ⌘ + [
Split Window Horizontally (new profile)	Option + ⌘ + H
Split Window Vertically (new profile)	Option + ⌘ + V
Previous Tab	⌘+ Left Arrow (I usually move by tab number like ⌘+1)
Next Tab	⌘+ Right Arrow
Go to Window	⌘ + Option + Number

My Favorite Shell Key Combos

These might be helpful to getting you faster with the shell. These are just common shell shortcuts unrelated to iTerm itelf. These will usually work in Bash/Zsh/Fish on Mac and on Linux. There are many shortcuts out there but I use these quite a bit. There is also more than one way to do a thing so adopt what you like best.

Hopefully some of these improve your work life. :)

Function	Key Combination	Use
Delete to start of line	Ctrl + U	Use this to start over typing without hitting Ctrl-C
Delete to end of line	Ctrl + K	Use this with command history to repeat commands and changing one thing at the end!
Repeat last command	Up Arrow	Cycle and browse your history with up and down. Ctrl-R is faster if you know the string you are looking for.
Move back and forth on a line	Left/Right Arrow Keys	This takes you off the home row but it's easy to remember
Move back and forth on a line by words	⌥ + Left/Right Arrow Keys	Fast way to jump by words to correct a typo or "run again" with minor changes to last command. Ctrl as modifier might also work on mac and non-mac keyboards/shells/apps.
Delete previous word (in shell)	Ctrl + W	It's faster to delete by words. Especially when your last command was wrong by a single typo or something.
Clear screen	Ctrl + L	This is telling the shell to do it instead of an explicit command like clear or cls in DOS. If you use ⌘ + K, this is telling iTerm to clear the screen which might have the same result or do something terrible (like when using a TUI like top or htop. In general, use this instead of typing clear over and over.
Exit Shell	Ctrl + D	Instead of typing exit, just get this in muscle memory. It works in many contexts as exit of end of file (EOF).

Moving Faster

A lot of shell shortcuts work in iterm and it's good to learn these because arrow keys, home/end keys and Mac equivalents don't always work. For example ⌘ + Left Arrow is usually the same as Home (go to beginning of current line) but that doesn't work in the shell. Home works in many apps but it takes you away from the home row.

Function	Shortcut
Move to the start of line	Ctrl + A or Home (Home is fn+Left arrow)
Move to the end of line	Ctrl + E or End (End is fn+Right arrow)
Moving by word on a line (this is a shell thing but passes through fine)	Ctrl + Left/Right Arrow
Cursor Jump with Mouse (shell and vim - might depend on config)	Option + Left Click

About keyboard shortcuts 💡

So, some keyboard shortcuts are Mac's. For example fn+Left Arrow is the Home key. On a fullsize Mac keyboard, there is a Home key. Home will usually pass through to iTerm and the shell. By shell, I mean zsh, bash or fish. The shell is the program running inside of iTerm when you open iTerm. If you launch vim or something, zsh/bash/fish is "gone" because vim is running. So, it's complicated to explain when keys work and when they don't.

For example, Home will work in zsh. It will take you to the beginning of the line. If your cursor is at the end of "three" in this below example

one two three|

When you press Home (fn+Left Arrow) your cursor will be on one: |one So, in this way, Home works the same in "the shell" as it does in TextEdit.app or any basic text box on Mac. This is not the case if you start up vim or emacs. This is not iTerm's fault. This is just how Mac/Linux works. Just a head's up on that little detail.

Copy and Paste with iTerm without using the mouse

I don't use this feature too much. I instead just mouse select (which copies to the clipboard) and paste. There's no need to Copy to the clipboard if you have General > Selection > Copy to pasteboard on selection enabled.

Function	Shortcut
Enter Copy Mode	Shift + ⌘ + C
Enter Character Selection Mode in Copy Mode	Ctrl + V
Move cursor in Copy Mode	HJKL vim motions or arrow keys
Copy text in Copy Mode	Ctrl + K

Copy actions goes into the normal system clipboard which you can paste like normal.

Search the Command History

Some of these are not directly related to iTerm and are just "shell features". Like, if you open Terminal.app on Mac some of these still work because it's the shell and not iTerm. I'm including them anyway.

Function	Shortcut
Search as you type	Ctrl + R and type the search term; Repeat Ctrl + R to loop through result
Search the last remembered search term	Ctrl + R twice
End the search at current history entry	Ctrl + Y
Cancel the search and restore original line	Ctrl + G

Misc

Function	Shortcut
Clear the screen/pane (when Ctrl + L won't work)	⌘ + K (I use this all the time)
Broadcast command to all panes in window (nice when needed!)	⌘ + Alt + I (again to toggle)
Find Cursor	⌘ + / or use a theme or cursor shape that is easy to see

Here's an easier way to replicate a/e Home/End Key Mappings by sending 1 as hex for home and 5 as hex for end. I read somewhere the hex codes for skipping words without modifying the option key to send escape but I couldn't find it just now.

Jump to the start of the line (Home):
Keyboard Shortcut:
⌘← (Command + Left-Arrow)
Action:
Send Hex Code
1

Jump to the end of the line (End):
Keyboard Shortcut:
⌘→ (Command + Right-Arrow)
Action:
Send Hex Code
5

⌘ + o shows a dialog with all profiles and selection of a profile opens tab in specific profile

Does anyone know if there have a shortcut to show all Snippet?

I'd like to show all snippets, and then choose one using the up/down arrow key.

To Undo the last changes. use Ctrl-x Ctrl-u or Ctrl-_

Thanks

any option to rename a particular plane?

Does anyone know why when I use fn + delete to delete a character after the cursor, it prints tilde(~) and didn't work

You can add set -o vi and export EDITOR=vi in your .zshrc (or .bashrc, or what have you). After you source it
(. .~/.zshrc), you are now in vi insert mode. Then you can do:
ESC - to exit the insert mode.
k - to move back in history
j - to move forward in history
/ pattern - to search for a command in the history containing 'pattern'
0 - to move to the beginning of the line
$ - to move to the end of the line
l - move to the right one char at a time
h - move to the left one char at a time
w - to move to the right one word at a time
b - to move to the left one word at a time
cw - to change word
dw - to delete word
C - to change to the end of line
D - to delete to the end of line
... etc ... etc ... you get the point I hope :)

if I want to undo the last text change on the command prompt in iTerm2 Ctrl+_ does not work.
If I try Ctrl+_ in the plain macOS terminal, it works. Am I missing some iTerm2 settings? Thanks!

Ctrl+_ seems to be a standard Unix terminal shortcut or something:
http://web.mit.edu/gnu/doc/html/features_7.html

@jirikrepl Wow. That's a new one. I've never heard of this feature! Amazingly, it's working here like a regular undo. Wow. I'm pressing Ctrl + _ and it works in iTerm2 and Terminal.

Hmm. I don't see any Ctrl based key mappings in iTerm's profile. I was thinking maybe something is remapping. To test that it isn't the shell, maybe you could invoke bash or zsh from iTerm. There's a flag to start the shell without reading your dotfiles too IIRC. Maybe this would help isolate/troubleshoot.

⌘ + Shift + arrow-up
⌘ + Shift + arrow-down
For navigating marks. If shell integration is enabled all commands are marked automatically, and you can quickly go to previous commands and their output.
✅

I didn't understand that when I navigated to pre/next Mark, the cursor was still in the same position.

so what is the point of navigation?

@alanhg I don't know what he meant by that. I use mcfly right now but have used other history searchers in the past. You configure it and then just hit ctrl-r and start typing. Also fish (or zsh) has a thing when you type a command and hit up arrow and it will filter by what you have typed already. So like sudo journalctl<up> would get you all the journalctl commands.

Is there any way to duplicate a tab into a new tab with a keyboard shortcut? I find myself having to ctrl + t to make a new tab, cycle back to the original tab, right click on the tab, and then duplicate it. Catch is that the original tab has to be color coordinated or I'll accidentally delete the duplicated tab. Additionally, you can't duplicate a tab in the right-click context menu unless it's actually in tab form, not window form, which is why I need to make an arbitrary tab in the first place, and at this point I wonder if it would just save more time to manually cd into my desired directory.

EDIT: I have found a workaround, sort of. In the settings, I discovered I can show tabs even when there's only one tab. This will make duplicating them a lot easier, however, I still wasn't able to figure out how shortcuts work. To the docs..

moving forward or backwards is not working for me, anyone know why that might be?

I would love an option to run a command on all the terminal.

I would love an option to run a command on all the terminal.

@SantaHub

1. Open "all your terminals" as split panes. For example. Cmd+D two times. Now you have 3 panes in one window.
2. Type Cmd+Option+I to enable broadcast mode. Click ok at the warning.
3. Type your command once to all panes.
4. Type Cmd+Option+I to disable broadcast mode.

This is very handy for cheap mass server administration at times. 🌹

Thanks @squarism! It's a such a handy list.
One bash key combination I find useful:
esc + # : comment out the current command and move to next line

What does Cmd+R do?

Fantastic! Extremely useful.

Good stuff!

What does Cmd+R do?

I sum up to this: Where's the Shift+Cmd+R documented?

I'm very used to alt + . command in Linux, which pastes the last argument from previous command. Any alternative? So far I use !$

@ralexrdz I had muscle memory in bash for !$ as last argument when I used bash (I still use bash), which will work in every terminal. So, I would use that. It's fast and probably pretty universal. It works in zsh too.

Lately, I use fish (and this is not an endorsement of fish necessarily) and the equivalent in fish is alt + up arrow. 🐟 These are shell things, not iTerm2 things, just to be clear. 😄

@ralexrdz M-. works for me in iTerm2 (3.5) in bash 5.2 and zsh 5.9. Thank you for teaching me a new shortcut 😄 Perhaps you have overridden the default binding somehow (such as with set -o vi). It is yank-last-arg from GNU readline so you'll find it in bash emacs mode, but not in many other shells.

Does anyone know if there have a shortcut to show all Snippet? I'd like to show all snippets, and then choose one using the up/down arrow key.

+1

Is there a shortcut to group related tabs together? For example I have a number of services within a parent folder, I'd like to group them for navigation ease. Much like the chrome offering of grouping tabs.

@ralexrdz you can go to iterm settings -> Profiles -> Keys -> General and set Left Option key to Esc+, alt+. and other alt+... keybindings will start working

I would like to add these ones:

Shortcut	Function
^ + X + E	Open editor with current command (specially good for editing long commands)
^ + Q	Park current command (you lost run a command before, save it memory while run a command first)
^ + X a	Reveal an alias

Default editor can be changed with preferred, mine: export EDITOR="code -w"