Terminal & Command Line Essential Keyboard Shortcuts

Terminal Command Line Shortcuts

Terminal keyboard shortcuts are based on readline, the line-editing library used by bash, zsh, and most shells. These shortcuts work in macOS Terminal, iTerm2, Windows Terminal, and Linux terminals.

Cursor Movement

• Beginning of Line (Ctrl+A) — jump to the start of the current command
• End of Line (Ctrl+E) — jump to the end
• Move Back One Word (⌥+B / Alt+B) — move cursor left by one word
• Move Forward One Word (⌥+F / Alt+F) — move cursor right by one word
• Move Back One Character (Ctrl+B) — same as left arrow
• Move Forward One Character (Ctrl+F) — same as right arrow

Text Editing

• Delete Word Before Cursor (Ctrl+W) — delete the word behind the cursor
• Delete to Beginning of Line (Ctrl+U) — clear everything before the cursor
• Delete to End of Line (Ctrl+K) — clear everything after the cursor
• Paste (Yank) (Ctrl+Y) — paste the last deleted text (from Ctrl+W, Ctrl+U, or Ctrl+K)
• Swap Characters (Ctrl+T) — swap the two characters before the cursor

History

• Previous Command (↑ or Ctrl+P) — cycle through previous commands
• Next Command (↓ or Ctrl+N) — cycle forward through command history
• Search History (Ctrl+R) — reverse incremental search through command history. Type any substring to find matching commands.
• Run Previous Command (!!) — re-execute the last command (not a shortcut, but essential)
• Run Last Command with sudo (sudo !!) — re-run the previous command with elevated privileges

Process Control

• Cancel (Ctrl+C) — send SIGINT to the foreground process
• Suspend (Ctrl+Z) — send SIGTSTP to suspend the process (resume with fg)
• EOF/Exit (Ctrl+D) — send end-of-file, closes the shell if the line is empty
• Clear Screen (Ctrl+L or ⌘+K) — clear the terminal output

These shortcuts use readline/emacs keybindings by default. Some shells support vim keybindings (set -o vi in bash).