Keybinding Action Reference

Reference of all Ghostty keybinding actions.

This is a reference of all Ghostty keybinding actions.

ignore

Ignore this key combination, don't send it to the child process, just black hole it.

unbind

This action is used to flag that the binding should be removed from the set. This should never exist in an active set and set.put has an assertion to verify this.

csi

Send a CSI sequence. The value should be the CSI sequence without the CSI header (ESC ] or \x1b]).

esc

text

Send an ESC sequence.

cursor_key

Send data to the pty depending on whether cursor key mode is enabled (application) or disabled (normal).

reset

Reset the terminal. This can fix a lot of issues when a running program puts the terminal into a broken state. This is equivalent to when you type "reset" and press enter.

If you do this while in a TUI program such as vim, this may break the program. If you do this while in a shell, you may have to press enter after to get a new prompt.

copy_to_clipboard

paste_from_clipboard

paste_from_selection

Copy and paste.

increase_font_size

decrease_font_size

Increase/decrease the font size by a certain amount.

reset_font_size

Reset the font size to the original configured size.

clear_screen

Clear the screen. This also clears all scrollback.

select_all

Select all text on the screen.

scroll_to_top

scroll_to_bottom

scroll_page_up

scroll_page_down

scroll_page_fractional

scroll_page_lines

Scroll the screen varying amounts.

adjust_selection

Adjust an existing selection in a given direction. This action does nothing if there is no active selection.

jump_to_prompt

Jump the viewport forward or back by prompt. Positive number is the number of prompts to jump forward, negative is backwards.

write_scrollback_file

Write the entire scrollback into a temporary file. The action determines what to do with the filepath. Valid values are:

  • "paste": Paste the file path into the terminal.
  • "open": Open the file in the default OS editor for text files. The default OS editor is determined by using open on macOS and xdg-open on Linux.

write_screen_file

Same as write_scrollback_file but writes the full screen contents. See write_scrollback_file for available values.

write_selection_file

Same as write_scrollback_file but writes the selected text. If there is no selected text this does nothing (it doesn't even create an empty file). See write_scrollback_file for available values.

new_window

Open a new window. If the application isn't currently focused, this will bring it to the front.

new_tab

Open a new tab.

previous_tab

Go to the previous tab.

next_tab

Go to the next tab.

last_tab

Go to the last tab (the one with the highest index)

goto_tab

Go to the tab with the specific number, 1-indexed. If the tab number is higher than the number of tabs, this will go to the last tab.

move_tab

Moves a tab by a relative offset. Adjusts the tab position based on offset (e.g., -1 for left, +1 for right). If the new position is out of bounds, it wraps around cyclically within the tab range.

toggle_tab_overview

Toggle the tab overview. This only works with libadwaita enabled currently.

new_split

Create a new split in the given direction. The new split will appear in the direction given.

goto_split

Focus on a split in a given direction.

toggle_split_zoom

zoom/unzoom the current split.

resize_split

Resize the current split by moving the split divider in the given direction

equalize_splits

Equalize all splits in the current window

inspector

Show, hide, or toggle the terminal inspector for the currently focused terminal.

open_config

Open the configuration file in the default OS editor. If your default OS editor isn't configured then this will fail. Currently, any failures to open the configuration will show up only in the logs.

reload_config

Reload the configuration. The exact meaning depends on the app runtime in use but this usually involves re-reading the configuration file and applying any changes. Note that not all changes can be applied at runtime.

close_surface

Close the current "surface", whether that is a window, tab, split, etc. This only closes ONE surface. This will trigger close confirmation as configured.

close_window

Close the window, regardless of how many tabs or splits there may be. This will trigger close confirmation as configured.

close_all_windows

Close all windows. This will trigger close confirmation as configured. This only works for macOS currently.

toggle_fullscreen

Toggle fullscreen mode of window.

toggle_window_decorations

Toggle window decorations on and off. This only works on Linux.

toggle_secure_input

Toggle secure input mode on or off. This is used to prevent apps that monitor input from seeing what you type. This is useful for entering passwords or other sensitive information.

This applies to the entire application, not just the focused terminal. You must toggle it off to disable it, or quit Ghostty.

This only works on macOS, since this is a system API on macOS.

toggle_quick_terminal

Toggle the "quick" terminal. The quick terminal is a terminal that appears on demand from a keybinding, often sliding in from a screen edge such as the top. This is useful for quick access to a terminal without having to open a new window or tab.

When the quick terminal loses focus, it disappears. The terminal state is preserved between appearances, so you can always press the keybinding to bring it back up.

To enable the quick terminally globally so that Ghostty doesn't have to be focused, prefix your keybind with global. Example:

keybind = global:cmd+grave_accent=toggle_quick_terminal

The quick terminal has some limitations:

  • It is a singleton; only one instance can exist at a time.
  • It does not support tabs, but it does support splits.
  • It will not be restored when the application is restarted (for systems that support window restoration).
  • It supports fullscreen, but fullscreen will always be a non-native fullscreen (macos-non-native-fullscreen = true). This only applies to the quick terminal window. This is a requirement due to how the quick terminal is rendered.

See the various configurations for the quick terminal in the configuration file to customize its behavior.

This currently only works on macOS.

toggle_visibility

Show/hide all windows. If all windows become shown, we also ensure Ghostty is focused.

This currently only works on macOS. When hiding all windows, we do not yield focus to the previous application.

quit

Quit ghostty.

crash