Update: as pointed out by SFA_AOK in the comments two more shortcuts have been added.

For ages man has toiled with pasting data into a terminal window by using the mouse. Right-Click, paste. Middle-click, Paste. Its all very tedious for all of us keyboard warriors. Those of us that are slowed down by the mouse and its pagan graphical goodness. No more! I present to you keyboard shortcuts that work within the terminal!

ctrl-insert : copy

shift-insert : paste

shift-delete : cut

shift-ctrl-C : copy

shift-ctrl-V : paste

Really. Give it a try. Copy something. Open a terminal. Paste. Mouse not required. What a beautiful day it is to be a keyboard warriors. You learn something new everyday.

(queue the small print) yes it is a little weird to get used to new shortcuts but it’ll be worth it. Plus, for those of us using Dvorak anyway the old-fashioned ctrl c v x aren’t in optimal positions anyway. Thanks goes to Aaron for sharing this tidy little nugget of keyboard goodness.

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Comments

15 Responses to “Paste-To-Terminal Keyboard Shortcuts”

  1. SFA_AOK on February 25th, 2007 10:40 am

    Maybe I’ve missed the point but: what was wrong with ctrl-shift C and ctrl-shift V?

  2. SFA_AOK on February 25th, 2007 12:54 pm

    Ah OK, just wanted to make sure you weren’t talking about something else that I was missing out on :)

  3. Marius Scurtescu on February 25th, 2007 5:36 pm

    How would you use ctrl-insert? Is it the exact same as shift-ctrl-C?

    Also, what exactly is shift-delete doing?

  4. Derek Buranen on February 25th, 2007 6:16 pm

    For the record, Christer is talking about KDE’s Konsole.

    Thanks for these as I never new copy or cut. I miss gnome-terminal’s shift+ctrl+c though.

  5. gfdsa on February 26th, 2007 3:40 am

    It’s not “terminal” shortcuts, it’s Konsole.

  6. Patrick on February 26th, 2007 1:49 pm

    “Also, what exactly is shift-delete doing?”

    I’m not sure about gnome, but in KDE shift+delte just deletes a file instead of moving it to the trash.

  7. Copia e incolla nel terminale, un paio di trucchetti at Yaab on March 1st, 2007 2:43 pm

    [...] traduzione di: Ubuntu Tutorials] Tags:GNU/Linux shell terminale [...]

  8. Sam on April 30th, 2007 7:23 am

    how do you select the stuff to copy and paste?

    And since your hand is already on the mouse to select, why shift your hand to the keyboard to do the rest?

  9. GiM on November 9th, 2007 6:21 am

    Thanks, I was looking how to paste into (u)xterm with keyboard, shift-insert works for me.

  10. Rocco Stanzione on January 21st, 2008 6:41 pm

    One of my favorites is “!!”, which gets expanded to your last full command. Like, “vi /etc/apt/sources.list” - oops, “sudo !!”. Or, “rm testfile.c”, “svn !!”. Or, “find . -name ‘*!’” followed by “rm $(!!)”. You get the idea.

  11. beerfan on January 22nd, 2008 8:42 pm

    The ctrl-shift-c and ctrl-shift-v keystrokes have to be some of the worst inspired ever.

  12. roxport on February 24th, 2008 11:53 am

    Works for pasting things from web browser (Win PC IE) into vi (PuTTY session, using screen).

  13. Jindofox on June 5th, 2008 6:16 am

    Neat - but the default Adblock Plus configuration relies on ctrl-shift-V combo to open the blockable items list. The instructions to change this are at http://adblockplus.org/en/faq_customization#shortcuts

  14. magaphoto on June 30th, 2008 9:56 am

    (humor)

    You had me until you said you were using Dvorak keyboarding.

    It reminded me of the scene in “Raising Arizona” whence the old con os stream-of-conciousness(ing) on the top bunk and he mentions “We ate sand.”

    (Thanks for the hint. Useful.)

    magaphoto

  15. David Marsden on July 12th, 2008 9:29 am

    If you want to use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V for cut and paste you can use Alt-F2 > gconf-editor > apps > gnome-terminal > keybindings > look for copy and paste > right-click > edit key > delete

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