TL;DR

Here are the shortcuts that will work in Terminal app.

Home: control + A

End: control + E

Next Word: esc, then f

Previous word: esc, then b

Why Bother

I like my shortcuts to be consistent across the most used applications: Chrome, Sublime Text 2 and iTerm. This way I don’t have to think about what application I’m in, and I can just hit the buttons.

I’ve set tab switch to option+command+left and option+command+right, home to command+left, and end to command+right and previous word to option+left, and next word to option+right. These shortcuts for the most part mimic the default behavior in Sublime Text 2 and other editors.

iTerm

iTerm is a better alternative to Terminal app on Mac OS X. You can get it at iterm2.com.

Go to your iTerm and open preferences from the menu (iTerm-> Preferences) or by using command + , or ⌘ + , shortcuts. Open Profiles tab and click on Keys for the Default profile.

To set home — that is, to jump to the beginning of a line — press command+left and then select ‘Send Hex Code’ and enter value 001.

Repeat the same thing for end substituting shortcut with command+right and hex with 005.

To set up previous word shortcut, press down option+left and then select ‘Send Escape Sequence’ and enter b. For the next word option+right shortcut, enter f.

Related posts:

I don’t know why Terminal and iTerm by default have broken shortcuts. Maybe there is some history to it, but it seems like I’m not the only person who has encountered (and/or fixed) the issue:

• Love Your Terminal
• Fixing Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down in Leopard’s Terminal
• Skip to Next or Previous Word in iTerm Using Alt / Option + Left or Right Arrow Keys
• Become a Command Line Ninja With These Time-Saving Shortcuts