• •Ctrl + A -- jump to the beginning of the line
• •Ctrl + E -- jump to the end of the line
• •Alt + F -- move forward one word
• •Alt + B -- move backward one word
• •Ctrl + F -- move forward one character (same as right arrow)
• •Ctrl + B -- move backward one character (same as left arrow)

The word-jumping shortcuts (Alt+F, Alt+B) are the most important. When your cursor is at the end of a long command and you need to change a flag in the middle, jumping word by word is dramatically faster than holding the left arrow.

• •Ctrl + U -- delete everything before the cursor (to the beginning of the line)
• •Ctrl + K -- delete everything after the cursor (to the end of the line)
• •Ctrl + W -- delete the word before the cursor
• •Alt + D -- delete the word after the cursor
• •Ctrl + D -- delete the character under the cursor (also exits the shell if the line is empty)

Ctrl + W is the most useful shortcut on this entire list. When you mistype a long path or argument, Ctrl+W deletes the last word instead of you holding backspace for 5 seconds.

• •Ctrl + _ (underscore) -- undo the last edit. Yes, the terminal has undo. Almost nobody knows this.

Press Ctrl+R and start typing. The terminal searches backward through your history for matching commands. Press Ctrl+R again to cycle through older matches. Press Enter to execute, or right arrow to edit the command first.

This is the single biggest time saver in the terminal. If you ran a complex command 30 minutes ago, Ctrl+R finds it in seconds.

• •Up/Down arrows -- cycle through previous commands (you know this one)
• •!! -- repeat the last command. Most useful as \sudo !!\ when you forget to run something with sudo
• •!$ -- insert the last argument of the previous command. Incredibly useful:

> mkdir my-new-project

> cd !$

This creates the directory and then cds into it using the last argument.

• •!*: -- insert all arguments of the previous command
• •!n -- execute command number n from history (use \history\ to see numbers)

• •Alt + . -- insert the last argument of the previous command (interactive version of !$). Press it repeatedly to cycle through last arguments of older commands.

This is better than !$ because you can see what is being inserted before pressing Enter.

• •Ctrl + C -- kill the current process (you know this)
• •Ctrl + Z -- suspend the current process (move it to background). Resume with \fg\
• •Ctrl + D -- send EOF (end of file). Closes the shell or terminates input

When you suspend a process with Ctrl+Z:

• •fg -- bring it back to the foreground
• •bg -- resume it in the background
• •jobs -- list all suspended/background jobs
• •kill %1 -- kill job number 1

This is useful when you accidentally start a long process and need to do something else without opening a new terminal. Ctrl+Z, do your thing, then \fg\ to go back.

• •cd - -- go back to the previous directory. This is the terminal equivalent of the back button, and it is incredibly useful.
• •cd ~ -- go to home directory (you can also just type \cd\ with no arguments)
• •cd .. -- go up one directory (you know this, but consider aliasing it)

Add these to your shell config for faster navigation:

> alias ..="cd .."

> alias ...="cd ../.."

> alias ....="cd ../../.."

Now \...\ goes up two directories instantly.

These commands maintain a stack of directories:

• •pushd /some/path -- go to /some/path and push your current directory onto the stack
• •popd -- go back to the directory on top of the stack

This is like bookmarking your current location before jumping somewhere else, then popping back when done.

• •Shift + Page Up/Down -- scroll through terminal output
• •Ctrl + L -- clear the screen (same as the \clear\ command but faster)

These are not shortcuts in the keyboard sense, but they are workflow shortcuts every developer should know:

• •command | less -- view long output with scrolling. Press q to quit, / to search
• •command | head -20 -- show only the first 20 lines
• •command | tail -20 -- show only the last 20 lines
• •command | grep "pattern" -- filter output for lines matching a pattern
• •command > file.txt -- redirect output to a file (overwrites)
• •command >> file.txt -- append output to a file
• •command 2>&1 -- redirect stderr to stdout (combine all output)

• •ls *.js -- all JS files in current directory
• •ls /.js -- all JS files recursively (this is a Zsh feature, Bash needs \shopt -s globstar\*)

Zsh can auto-correct typos. If you type \gti status\ it will ask "did you mean git?" Enable it with:

> setopt correct

• •d -- shows a numbered list of recently visited directories (if using Oh My Zsh)
• •Type the number to jump to that directory

• •Ctrl+B c -- create new window
• •Ctrl+B n -- next window
• •Ctrl+B p -- previous window
• •Ctrl+B 0-9 -- jump to window by number

• •Ctrl+B % -- split vertically
• •Ctrl+B " -- split horizontally
• •Ctrl+B arrow keys -- navigate between panes
• •Ctrl+B z -- zoom current pane (toggle fullscreen)

• •Ctrl+B d -- detach from session (it keeps running in the background)
• •tmux attach -- reattach to the last session