Boost Your Terminal Productivity

So, this is going to be a short one. Today, I was looking for a quick way to jump to the start of the line in the terminal, and when searching for it, I found a lot more cool keybinds that are actually very useful. I immediately fell in love with how much these shortcuts streamline my workflow, and I just had to share them. So Enjoy! 😁

Why Keyboard Shortcuts are Your Best Friend

Keyboard shortcuts reduce the time you take to perform actions as it is much easier to just press a button combo than to use the mouse.
Come let’s play a game of “How many times has this happened to you?“—

• You've typed a super long git command, or a complex docker command, and realized you made a typo right at the beginning of it?

  • Solution: Ctrl + A (jump to start), fix it, then Ctrl + E (jump to end) to continue. Much faster than holding the left arrow key.

    This was the original reason I looked up these keybinds!

• You just ran a kubectl apply -f path/to/my-service.yaml and now you need to run kubectl delete -f path/to/my-service.yaml? Or maybe you just created a file and now need to git add it?

  • Solution: Hit Alt + . to immediately bring up path/to/my-service.yaml (or the previous command's last argument). Type kubectl delete -f then Alt + .. Boom.

    This one is a game-changer I used to go to the previous cmd, go to the starting of it and then change the cmd. This one is going to be my favorite!

• You're working in a complex directory structure, and you need to quickly change parts of a file path in your current command, like changing src/components/button/index.ts to src/pages/about/index.ts?

  • Solution: Use Alt + B to jump back word by word (components, then src), edit pages/about, and then Alt + F to jump forward over index.ts.

    Well I already use Ctrl + ← and Ctrl + → and I think they work exactly the same as Alt + B and Alt + F. But If you didn’t use any of the two, well now you know!

• You know you ran a specific command yesterday (maybe a grep or a find), but you can't quite remember the exact syntax, and scrolling through hundreds of lines of history is a nightmare?

  • Solution: Ctrl + R (reverse-incremental search). Start typing a keyword you remember, and it will magically pull up matching commands from your history. Press Ctrl + R again to cycle through matches.

    I’ve already had this covered with a history plugin but it’s nice to know that I didn’t even need that. Ctrl + R had me covered all along!

I am sure there are many other such scenarios where these commands would be very useful, So keeping them in your repertoire of tricks would be great for your productivity!

Here is a list of all the essential terminal shortcuts (Emacs-style, default for Bash and Zsh):

Essential Terminal Shortcuts

• Move Cursor:

  • Ctrl + A: To the start of the line.

  • Ctrl + E: To the end of the line.

  • Alt + F: Forward one word.

  • Alt + B: Backward one word.

  • Ctrl + F: Forward one character.

  • Ctrl + B: Backward one character.

• Delete/Cut:

  • Ctrl + K: Cut from cursor to end of line.

  • Ctrl + U: Cut the entire line (Zsh) / from cursor to beginning (Bash).

  • Ctrl + W: Cut the previous word.

  • Alt + D: Delete the next word.

  • Ctrl + _ (or Ctrl + Shift + -): Undo last change.

• Paste:

  • Ctrl + Y: Paste (from the clipboard/kill ring).

• History:

  • Ctrl + R: Reverse-incremental search through history.

  • Alt + .: Insert the last argument of the previous command (press repeatedly to cycle).

  • Ctrl + P (or Up Arrow): Previous command.

  • Ctrl + N (or Down Arrow): Next command.

• Other:

  • Ctrl + L: Clear the screen.

  • Ctrl + C: Interrupt (kill current process).

  • Ctrl + Z: Suspend (send current process to background).

Note: Some of these commands may not work as intended because of the exact combination of terminal and shell you are using so do your own research