Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts may vary by platform and terminal. In fullscreen rendering, press ? in the transcript viewer to see available shortcuts there.

macOS users: Option/Alt key shortcuts (Alt+B, Alt+F, Alt+D, Alt+Y, Alt+P) require configuring Option as Meta in your terminal. See Enable Option key shortcuts on macOS for the setting in each terminal.

General controls

Shortcut	Description	Context
Ctrl+C	Interrupt, or clear input	Interrupts a running operation. If nothing is running, the first press clears the prompt input and a second press exits Claude Code
Ctrl+X Ctrl+K	Stop all running background subagents in this session, and turn off artifact auto-replies for the rest of it. Press twice within 3 seconds to confirm	Subagent control
Ctrl+D	Exit Claude Code session	The first press shows a confirmation hint and a second press within 800ms exits. When the prompt has text, Ctrl+D deletes the character after the cursor instead
Ctrl+G or Ctrl+X Ctrl+E	Open in default text editor	Edit your prompt or custom response in your default text editor. Ctrl+X Ctrl+E is the readline-native binding. Turn on Show last response in external editor in /config to prepend Claude's previous reply as #-commented context above your prompt; Claude Code strips the comment block when you save
Ctrl+L	Redraw or clear the screen	Forces a full terminal redraw, keeping input and conversation history. Use this to recover if the display becomes garbled or partially blank. In fullscreen rendering, it also clears the screen, and you can scroll up to see the earlier messages
Ctrl+O	Toggle transcript viewer	Shows detailed tool usage and execution, with a timestamp and the model used on each assistant message. Also expands lines that collapse by default, such as MCP calls, shown as a single Called slack 3 times line, and messages from your other sessions, shown as a one-line Message from @<sender> preview
Ctrl+R	Reverse search command history	Search through previous commands interactively
Ctrl+V or Cmd+V (iTerm2) or Alt+V (Windows and WSL)	Paste image from clipboard	Inserts an [Image #N] chip at the cursor so you can reference it positionally in your prompt. On WSL, both Ctrl+V and Alt+V are bound; use Alt+V if your terminal intercepts Ctrl+V
Ctrl+B	Background running tasks	Backgrounds Bash commands and agents. Tmux users press twice
Ctrl+T	Toggle Claude's task checklist	Show or hide Claude's to-do checklist in the status area. This is not the background-task view; use /tasks to see running shells and subagents
Ctrl+S	Stash or restore prompt	With text in the input, stashes it and clears the prompt. Pressed again on an empty prompt, restores the stashed text, cursor position, and pasted content
Ctrl+Z	Suspend Claude Code	Unix only. Suspends the process to your shell; run fg to resume
Left/Right arrows	Cycle through dialog tabs	Navigate between tabs in permission dialogs and menus
Tab	Accept an autocomplete suggestion, or add a comment to a permission answer	While autocomplete suggestions are showing in the prompt input, accepts the selected suggestion. On most permission prompts, with Yes or No focused, opens a comment field on that option, and pressing it again closes the field. See add a comment when you answer a permission prompt
Up/Down arrows or Ctrl+P/Ctrl+N	Move cursor or navigate command history	When the input spans more than one visual row, whether wrapped or multiline, first moves the cursor within the prompt. Once the cursor is on the first or last visual row, pressing again navigates command history. While you have messages queued, Up from the first row instead takes them back
Esc	Interrupt Claude, or close a dialog	Stop the current response or tool call mid-turn so you can redirect. Claude keeps the work done so far. If you have messages queued, Claude Code sends them next. When a dialog is open, Esc closes the dialog. On a permission prompt, Esc declines the action, the same as No without a comment
Esc + Esc	Clear input draft, or rewind	When the prompt input contains text, double Esc clears it and saves the draft to history so Up recalls it. When the input is empty, double Esc opens the rewind menu to restore or summarize code and conversation from a previous point
Shift+Tab, or Alt+M on Windows when the Node or Bun runtime doesn't enable VT input mode	Cycle permission modes	Cycle through default (labeled Manual in the mode indicator), acceptEdits, plan, and, when available, bypassPermissions and then auto. From auto, the first press switches to default. See permission modes. On a file permission prompt, the same key closes an open comment field. With no field open, it selects the option that allows the action for the rest of the session, when the prompt offers that option
Option+P (macOS) or Alt+P (Windows/Linux)	Switch model	Switch models without clearing your prompt
Option+T (macOS) or Alt+T (Windows/Linux)	Toggle extended thinking	Enable or disable extended thinking mode. Has no effect on Fable 5.1 or Fable 5, which always use extended thinking. Works on macOS without configuring Option as Meta
Option+O (macOS) or Alt+O (Windows/Linux)	Toggle fast mode	Enable or disable fast mode

Text editing

Shortcut	Description	Context
Ctrl+A	Move cursor to start of current line	In multiline input, moves to the start of the current logical line
Ctrl+E	Move cursor to end of current line	In multiline input, moves to the end of the current logical line
Ctrl+K	Delete to end of line	Stores deleted text for pasting
Ctrl+U	Delete from cursor to line start	Stores deleted text for pasting. Repeat to clear across lines in multiline input. On macOS, terminal emulators including iTerm2 and Terminal.app map Cmd+Backspace to this shortcut
Ctrl+W	Delete back to previous whitespace	Stores deleted text for pasting. One press removes a whole path or --flag=value. To delete only the previous word, press Option+Delete on macOS or Ctrl+Backspace on Windows
Ctrl+Y	Paste deleted text	Pastes the text you last deleted with one of the word or line deletion shortcuts, such as Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U, or Ctrl+W
Alt+Y (after Ctrl+Y)	Cycle paste history	After pasting, cycle through previously deleted text. Requires Option as Meta on macOS
Alt+B	Move cursor back one word	Word navigation. Requires Option as Meta on macOS
Alt+F	Move cursor forward one word	Moves to the end of the current word, or to the end of the next word when the cursor is between words. Requires Option as Meta on macOS
Alt+D	Delete to end of word	Deletes to the end of the current word, or to the end of the next word when the cursor is between words. Stores deleted text for pasting. Requires Option as Meta on macOS
Ctrl+_ or Ctrl+Shift+-	Undo last input edit	Restores the previous input text and cursor position

Word boundaries in editing shortcuts

The word shortcuts Alt+B, Alt+F, Alt+D, Option+Delete, and Ctrl+Backspace treat a word as a run of letters and digits, so punctuation such as _, ., and / separates words. With src/utils/foo.ts in the prompt, repeated presses of Alt+B stop at the start of ts, foo, utils, and src.

Ctrl+W is different: it ignores punctuation and deletes back to the previous whitespace, so one press removes all of src/utils/foo.ts.

In text written without spaces, such as Chinese or Japanese, the word shortcuts still move or delete one word at a time.

These readline conventions apply in Claude Code v2.1.261 and later. The keybindingFlavor setting that turned them on in earlier versions is deprecated and has no effect.

You can't remap these shortcuts in the keybindings configuration file, which has no actions for them.

Theme and display

Shortcut	Description	Context
Ctrl+T	Toggle syntax highlighting for code blocks	Only works inside the /theme picker menu. Controls whether code in Claude's responses uses syntax coloring

Multiline input

Method	Shortcut	Context
Quick escape	\ + Enter	Works in all terminals
Option key	Option+Enter	After enabling Option as Meta on macOS
Shift+Enter	Shift+Enter	Native in iTerm2, WezTerm, Ghostty, Kitty, Warp, Apple Terminal, Windows Terminal. For other terminals, see Enter multiline prompts
Control sequence	Ctrl+J	Works in any terminal without configuration
Paste mode	Paste directly	For code blocks, logs

Quick commands

Shortcut	Description	Notes
/ at start	Command or skill	See commands and skills
! at start	Shell mode	Run a command directly, add its output to the session, and have Claude respond to it
@	File path mention	Trigger file path autocomplete. In sessions with cross-session messaging, when you type at least one letter after the @, Claude Code also suggests your other live sessions on this machine, so you can tell Claude to message the one you pick. Requires Claude Code v2.1.232 or later
:	Emoji shortcode	Type a full :name: to insert the emoji, or two or more characters for suggestions. See Emoji shortcodes. Requires Claude Code v2.1.217 or later
? on empty input	Toggle the shortcut help panel	Typing ? when the input already contains text inserts the character

Transcript viewer

When the transcript viewer is open (toggled with Ctrl+O), these shortcuts are available. Run /tui with no argument to check which renderer is active. Ctrl+E can be rebound via transcript:toggleShowAll.

Shortcut	Description
?	Toggle the keyboard shortcut help panel. Requires fullscreen rendering
\{ / \}	Jump to the previous or next user prompt, like vim paragraph motion. Requires fullscreen rendering
Ctrl+E	Toggle show all content. Available in the classic renderer only, not in fullscreen rendering
[	Write the full conversation to your terminal's native scrollback so Cmd+F, tmux copy mode, and other native tools can search it. Requires fullscreen rendering
v	Write the conversation to a temporary file and open it in $VISUAL or $EDITOR. Requires fullscreen rendering
q, Ctrl+C, Esc	Exit transcript view. All three can be rebound via transcript:exit

Voice input

Shortcut	Description	Notes
Hold or tap Space	Voice dictation	Requires voice dictation to be enabled. Hold to record, or run /voice tap for tap-to-toggle. Rebindable