Keyboard shortcuts for Terminal

The Terminal (or iTerm) is the MacOS application to access the command line (see lessons on the introduction to the command line here and here. Today we'll cover keyboard shortcuts that can be used to navigate around iTerm -- fnding old commands you've run, navigating to different parts of the command quickly, opening new terminal windows, etc. We'll highlight a few key commands below, but Apple has curated an extensive, operating-system specific list of keyboard shortcuts here. The commands shown below are for Mac OS 13.0, but many will be operating system agnostic and will also work in Linux.

Edit a command line

Action	Shortcut
Reposition the insertion point	Press and hold Option while moving the pointer to a new insertion point
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the line	Control + a
Move the insertion point to the end of the line	Control + e
Move the insertion point forward one character	Right Arrow
Move the insertion point backward one character	Left Arrow
Move the insertion point forward one word	Option + Right Arrow
Move the insertion point backward one word	Option + Left Arrow

Re-running and stopping commands

Action	Shortcut
Find previously run commands	Up Arrow
Cancel a command	Control + c

Work with Terminal windows and tabs

Action	Shortcut
New window	Command + n
New tab	Command + t
Next Tab	Control + Tab
Previous Tab	Control + Shift + Tab
Make fonts bigger	Command + Plus (+)
Make fonts smaller	Command + Minus (–)
Split window into two panes	Command + d
Close split panel	Shift + Command + d