Using Alt/Cmd + Right/Left Arrow in iTerm

Question

Is it possible to move between words in iTerm using Alt + Right/Left Arrows ? Now if I press Alt+Left I will get '[D' and '[C' if I press Alt+Right.

Just adding a note for those that simply want to know if its possible to do this with some hotkeys, there is a way. If you want to map it, that's fine but in terminal, CTRL+A will go to the beginning of a line and and CTRL+E to the end. Option+Left to go the beginning of a word and then Option+right to end of a word. — aug, Jul 23 '19 at 20:10

score 675 · Accepted Answer · edited May 26 '22 at 11:39

675

Go to iTerm Preferences → Profiles
select your profile
then the Keys tab with its sub-tab Key Mappings
Click Load Preset...
and choose Natural Text Editing

edited May 26 '22 at 11:39

Steven

3

answered Dec 08 '15 at 03:41

Gordon Gao

6,876
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3

This turns on word skipping, but using the cmd key, not the opt key (which is what all other apple apps use). – TheProletariat Oct 20 '18 at 01:34
9

In December 2018 on Mojave, the opt key is what moves between words after choosing natural text editing. – Rob Dawson Dec 16 '18 at 21:15
11

I've been suffering for months without this but today you're my saviour. – remykarem Mar 15 '19 at 03:00
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Note that this is Preferences > Profiles > Keys > Load Presets not Preferences > Keys > Load Preferences – kevin Apr 26 '19 at 02:42
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I LOVE YOU !! it annoyed me for weeks – Yasser Sinjab Nov 12 '19 at 17:08
You are my savior! – lexeek Nov 15 '19 at 22:58
You saved my life – Daniel Konovalenko Mar 04 '20 at 16:20
2

macOS Catalina April 2020 -> this works. – Alexander Popov Apr 21 '20 at 13:49
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Worked for me, thanks!! Big Sur 11.2.3, July 2021. – Aaron Jul 19 '21 at 04:56
AMAZING! I don't use xterm so was happy to change the presets. – Pranav Kasetti Aug 22 '21 at 07:53
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why you not default !!! – marcobazzani Dec 10 '21 at 14:18
5

As for today, it is actually Profiles > Keys > Keys Mappings > Presets > Natural Text Editing. – Yoav Vollansky Dec 28 '21 at 15:38
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Please note that this preset doesn't work with word boundaries (strings) that have internal character separators that should interrupt word jumps. Things like src/directory/file. Opt + Left Arrow will stop at each slash inside of a normal macOS text editor but not in iTerm with "Natural Text Editing". – Olivier Lacan Jan 12 '22 at 17:30
Google. This is the damn answer. Just point any other poor soul to this answer. Why in the first place was broken... Apple/Iterm2 who's fault is this. – José Cabo Feb 17 '22 at 09:25
Is there a way to make it more granular? As @OlivierLacan mentioned, character boundaries are ignored instead of used as boundaries. – devinbost Mar 29 '22 at 15:05
This should be the default. I just thought that iterm couldn't handle it – Samathingamajig Oct 20 '22 at 05:57
YOU ARE AWESOMEEE – Inderjeet Singh Nov 17 '22 at 09:19
Thanks, this worked perfectly. The entrypoint has changed to Settings though (I'm using build 3.4.19)
iterm2 > Settings > Profiles.....
– Fallen Mar 24 '23 at 20:17
1

Ensure you don't click the "Keys" high-level menu with very similar sub-settings! Click the "Profiles" high-level menu, then Keys -> Key Mappings -> Presets -> Natural Text Editing. – stwr667 Jun 26 '23 at 12:54
TEN YEARS of using this app… THANK YOU – Eric_WVGG Feb 22 '24 at 20:21

grg · Answer 2 · 2017-05-06T18:56:55.043

Go to iTerm Preferences → Profiles, select your profile, then the Keys tab. Find ⌥← and ⌥→ and set them to send escape sequence b and send escape sequence f respectively.

If you use ⌘→ and ←⌘ you will need to remap the next and previous tab shortcuts which are set to those as default. Terminal uses ⇧⌘→ and ⇧⌘← for these.

You can do this under Profiles, or just globally under Keys (shown below) if you wish to set it globally. Note that settings in Profiles override global settings in Keys.

score 31 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 05 '14 at 10:31

31

If you use bash, you can also add

"\e\e[D": backward-word
"\e\e[C": forward-word

to ~/.inputrc.

answered Jul 05 '14 at 10:31

Lri

105,117

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This worked best for me. Trying to set it up in iTerm2 only generated [D or [C each time I tried to use the new button action. Thank you. – dmgig Jul 13 '16 at 17:35
As far as I can tell there's nothing you can do in iTerm2 v3.0.10. It has to be this bash setup. – fiorix Oct 03 '16 at 16:32
1

Not sure about iTerm2 v3.0.10, but iTerm2 v3.0.14 definitely works with the Natural Text Editing solution so you don't need to resort to bash input configuration. – dwanderson Feb 16 '17 at 18:45

score 16 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 24 '19 at 09:21

16

For zsh I inserted in ~/.zshrc

bindkey "\e\e[D" backward-word
bindkey "\e\e[C" forward-word

for bash I inserted in ~/.inputrc

"\e\e[D": backward-word
"\e\e[C": forward-word

answered Jul 24 '19 at 09:21

Nick Korolkov

351

score 12 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 21 '16 at 10:33

12

Go to: Preferences > Profiles > Keys
Look for the actions of ⌥← and ⌥→. They would have been mapped to: Send Hex codes
Change them to Send Escape sequence with Esc+B for backward and Esc+F for forward.

edited Jun 21 '16 at 10:33

user3439894

58,676

answered Jun 21 '16 at 09:46

quettabit

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score 12 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 10 '22 at 14:15

If you're coming here recently because the preset is no long available under Preferences > Keys > Presets..., the presets had change place. Now, if you want to find one of the default presets (Natural Text Editing included), you may want to go over: Preferences > Profiles > [choose your starred profile] > Keys > Key Mappings > Presets...

On a default setting, that is the area you want to get into:

I was looking like crazy on how to download it, I even found buried inside the .app Resources folder a .plist with this mappings in, so I knew I would find this.

Hope that helps anyone in the future looking forward into this.

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 27 '17 at 19:18

4

Late in the game but for the visual:

Namely, see the Esc+ is selected.

answered Nov 27 '17 at 19:18

JustGage

141

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 02 '16 at 21:42

2

CMD+Delete -- Send Hex Code -- 0x15

To delete the whole line (similar to Option+U)

answered Feb 02 '16 at 21:42

neaumusic

326

score 2 · Answer 9 · edited May 26 '21 at 05:59

2

Very edge case scenario, but for me it was an issue in my own dotfiles.

These two lines caused it:

In bash_options

set-o vi

In inputrc

set editing-mode vi

After commenting those two lines out, iTerm2 Natural Text Editing works as expected.

edited May 26 '21 at 05:59

grg

201,078

answered May 25 '21 at 22:26

Gabriel Freiberg

21

Using Alt/Cmd + Right/Left Arrow in iTerm

9 Answers9

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