Linux terminal with text selection

I think this is one of many un-features in Linux world where

• It would benefit a beginner
• It sounds simple but actually quite complicated to get right (especially if you aim to keep compatibility with things)
• Anyone possessing the skills to implement it neither needs it nor cares about it

As such, for you individually, I suggest just getting more comfortable with tmux (or zellij) and vi-like keybinds for text manipulation. Once you learn those (and set your readline mode to vi), you won't look back. Oh, also, try Ctrl+x Ctrl+e in bash, it might help.

Or switch to emacs and using it as a terminal emulator. In that case you will have to learn and use emacs keybindings, but the selection semantics in the "terminal" will be the same as in the "editor".

I've got what I wanted with wezterm + powershell. I can edit my commands the same way I edit any text anywhere in the system, both in Windows and Linux, and I can copy-paste back and forth between terminal and any other app. This is awesome. This is freedom. This is UX done right.

I will paste below some observations I've made.

Possible solutions for Bash

• https://github.com/jirutka/zsh-shift-select - plugin for zsh as pointed out by @stupid_asshole69@hexbear.net and several other sources;
• https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh - ReadLine replacement for Bash (most promising);
• https://github.com/magenta404/natural-selection - plugin for FishShell;
• https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/p0jjno/how_to_use_shift_arrow_keys_to_select_text_in/ - most useful source on this topic.

Blesh

https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh/wiki/Manual-%C2%A74-Editing

• Super simple installation.
• Home/End - Jump to start/end as expected. ✅
• Ctrl+Backspace removes left char instead of left word. ❌
• Ctrl+Delete removes next word as it should. ✅
• Shift+arrows - char-wise text selection ✅
• Shift+Ctrl+arrows - word-wise text selection ✅
• Shift+Home/End don't do anything. ❌
• Backspace/Delete: When smth is selected they delete it. ✅
• Copy/Paste/Cut: ❌
  • It's Alt+W/Ctrl+Y/Ctrl+W instead of Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V/Ctrl+X.
  • All work with selection as expected.
  • All work with internal buffer instead of system clipboard.
• System clipboard:
  • Can't copy selection to clipboard, can't paste clipboard into selection.
  • Ctrl+Shift+C/V work as they do in vanilla bash: copy what is selected with mouse to clipboard, paste from clipboard.
• Ctrl+C prints current command and starts new one like in vanilla bash.

zsh-shift-select

• Stated to have best compatibiliy with Alacritty.
  • Alacritty requires Cargo (440MB).
    • cannot install package alacritty 0.16.1, it requires rustc 1.85.0 or newer, while the currently active rustc version is 1.75.0 Fail. Will use Gnome Terminal instead.
• Needs zsh, super simple installation.
  • Zsh should be default shell, gnome-shell crashed with SIGSEGV.
  • Plugin itself has simple installation, just git clone .zsh file and source it in .zshrc
• Ctrl+arrows - prints CD instead of moving word-wise ❌
• Ctrl+Backspace, Ctrl+Delete - are not deleting left/right word ❌
• Home/End - Jump to start/end as expected. ✅
• Shift+Left/Right - char-wise text selection ✅
• Shift+Ctrl+arrows - word-wise text selection ✅
• Shift+Home/End don't do anything. ❌
• Shift+Up/Down - Select one line up/down ✅
• Backspace/Delete - When smth is selected - delete it. ✅
• Copy/Paste/Cut: ❌
  • Documented as Alt+W/Ctrl+Y/Ctrl+W instead of Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V/Ctrl+X.
  • Alt+W/Ctrl+Y work as copy/paste.
  • Ctrl+W removes previous word instead of Cut selection.
  • Work with internal buffer instead of system clipboard.
• System clipboard:
  • Ctrl+Shift+C/V work as they do in blesh and vanilla bash.
  • Can't copy selection to clipboard, can't paste clipboard into selection.
• Ctrl+C prints current command and starts new one like in vanilla bash.

wezterm + Powershell

PSReadLine starts with EditMode = Emacs by default.

Set-PSReadLineOption -EditMode Windows Fixes Ctrl+arrows, Ctrl+backspace, Shift+Ctrl+arrows.

Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord Ctrl+Delete -Function KillWord - Fixes Ctrl+Delete.

Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord Ctrl+o -Function AddLine - allows Ctrl+o instead of Shift+Enter to create a new line without trying to execute. Shift+Enter is not possible in Linux.

Reassigning Shift+Home/End in Gnome Terminal from scrolling viewport to something else is a rabbit hole, so I switched to wezterm, which fixed Shift+Home/End, and apparently also fixed a bug of Shift+arrows printing D;D;D; instead of selecting. But broke Shift+Ctrl+arrows. But you can fix it back by disabling this assignment in lua config.

Ctrl+C/V/X work fine, but without system clipboard synchronization. To fix it, install xclip. If it makes terminal freeze on Ctrl+C/X, update PSReadLine module.

• Ctrl+arrows ✅
• Ctrl+Backspace, Ctrl+Delete ✅
• Home/End ✅
• Shift+Left/Right ✅
• Shift+Ctrl+arrows ✅
• Shift+Home/End ✅
• Shift+Up/Down ❌
• Shift+Enter - Ctrl+o instead ✅
• Ctrl+C,Ctrl+V,Ctrl+X - Flawless ✅

Fedora KDE

By default it has Konsole terminal, it doesn't send Shift+Left/Right to shell (try showkey -a). These terminals don't fit because they don't send this chord: Konsole, QTerminal, Yakuake. And Wezterm doesn't support Fedora 43. Then I've tried Kitty and it works both in bash and Powershell. Therefore, Wezterm for Ubuntu+Gnome and Kitty for Fedora+KDE.

Windows + conhost + Powershell Core

PSReadLine starts with EditMode = Windows by default.

• Ctrl+arrows ✅
• Ctrl+Backspace, Ctrl+Delete ✅
• Home/End ✅
• Shift+Left/Right ✅
• Shift+Ctrl+arrows ✅
• Shift+Home/End ✅
• Shift+Up/Down ❌
• Shift+Enter ✅
• Esc - clear current command ✅
• Ctrl+C,Ctrl+V,Ctrl+X - Flawless, all with system clipboard. ✅

I think if we want something like that to be consistent everywhere we need to stop using Ctrl so much as a modifier for non-terminal tasks. It doesn't solve everything, but using Alt or Super for copy and paste like Haiku and MacOS do is a big step in the right direction. It's just hard to change an established custom without making the whole experience less consistent

I think Ctrl A and Ctrl E are home and end in cli

I feel your pain, the only one's I know are...

• CTRL+a = cursor to beginning of line
• SHIFT+CTRL+c = Copy
• SHIFT+CTRL+x = Cut
• SHIFT+CTRL+v = Paste

I get those 3 bulleted features in my terminal, alacritty. But not with Shift. For highlighting I'm pretty much limited to selecting text with the mouse and ctrl-shift-c.

For more sophisticated text selection, tmux comes to mind. Default key bindings appear to be emacs-esque, though vi style is possible too. Custom keybindings are possible as well. It does seem like you may be forced to enter a special mode for selection rather than having that available all the time with just shift.

I have everything you mentioned (except maybe the selection only stuff, I don’t use it and forget if I set it up at all) set up in my zsh+kitty setup, so it’s definitely possible. If you want I can dig thru my zshrc and kitty config for the relevant parts once I’m at my pc later.

People in here saying it’s a bad idea for things like compatibility with other shells make some good points, but I think they’re missing one important aspect - fuck other shells, what do I care? 95% of my time in the terminal is spent on my own machine and I may as well make it convenient for myself. The odd time I ssh into another box without my keybinds I’ll be a bit less efficient, but that’s a worthwhile trade off imo.

There's apparently a ZSH plugin for this with a quite a few stars, though I haven't used it and can't speak for how well it works. In other shells what you want just doesn't exist to my knowledge, though it should be possible to script it with enough effort.

The problem is that in the terminal you always have at least two layers of input handling in the terminal emulator and the shell. And these layers talk to each other by emulating a 70s VT100. This leads to some issues, in no particular order:

• Terminal emulator keybindings will step on shell keybindings, and the shell will never know about it because it can't actually see the keys being pressed.
• Even if the terminal doesn't care about a key, it might be impossible or error-prone to detect anyway. This applies to surprisingly regular keys like Tab.
• As you've noticed some terminals try to get clever and do things like making Ctrl-C copy if you've selected text. The shell doesn't know about this either.
• Most shells and TUI apps have selection modes. These are independent from terminal selections.
• There's no standard way of using the clipboard in Linux, but multiple different ones that may or may not work.

All of these problems gets worse if you add multiplexers like tmux by the way.

Now it would be possible to write a bespoke terminal emulator and shell combination that unifies selection and makes all the reasonable keybindings actually work. There are attempts at this, such as the Emacs Eshell. Unfortunately Emacs people don't quite share your idea of what reasonable keybindings look like (and it's also a little bit broken, though for mostly unrelated reason).

Ultimately though the main reason this is an unsolved problem is that most Linux users just get used to the regular Readline line editor that all commonly used shells ship with. Complex edits can always be done in your $EDITOR (via C-X C-E in Bash).

I know in zsh, fish, and nushell, you can press a key combo to jump into a text editor of your choice. You write your command there, with all the power and shortcuts in emacs, vim, nano (whatever you like to use). Then you save and exit, and it appears in your command line, ready to execute.

Ctrl + a or crtl + e is start or end of line?

Call me cringe but this all works in Fish which is what I primarily use

I think most of this works for me in zsh. But also tmux can help with selection; I believe by default you use your prefix then open bracket (Ctrl-b + [) to put your self in selection mode. I have some configs to use vim bindings in selection mode.

Tmux selection:

# Yanking
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi v send-keys -X begin-selection
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi C-v send-keys -X rectangle-toggle
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-selection-and-cancel

zsh keybinding:

# Key Bindings
# set vim mode
bindkey -v

# create a zkbd compatible hash;
# to add other keys to this hash, see: man 5 terminfo
typeset -g -A key

key[Home]="${terminfo[khome]}"
key[End]="${terminfo[kend]}"
key[Insert]="${terminfo[kich1]}"
key[Backspace]="${terminfo[kbs]}"
key[Delete]="${terminfo[kdch1]}"
key[Up]="${terminfo[kcuu1]}"
key[Down]="${terminfo[kcud1]}"
key[Left]="${terminfo[kcub1]}"
key[Right]="${terminfo[kcuf1]}"
key[PageUp]="${terminfo[kpp]}"
key[PageDown]="${terminfo[knp]}"
key[Shift-Tab]="${terminfo[kcbt]}"

# setup key accordingly
[[ -n "${key[Home]}"      ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Home]}"       beginning-of-line
[[ -n "${key[End]}"       ]] && bindkey -- "${key[End]}"        end-of-line
[[ -n "${key[Insert]}"    ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Insert]}"     overwrite-mode
[[ -n "${key[Backspace]}" ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Backspace]}"  backward-delete-char
[[ -n "${key[Delete]}"    ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Delete]}"     delete-char
[[ -n "${key[Up]}"        ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Up]}"         up-line-or-history
[[ -n "${key[Down]}"      ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Down]}"       down-line-or-history
[[ -n "${key[Left]}"      ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Left]}"       backward-char
[[ -n "${key[Right]}"     ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Right]}"      forward-char
[[ -n "${key[PageUp]}"    ]] && bindkey -- "${key[PageUp]}"     beginning-of-buffer-or-history
[[ -n "${key[PageDown]}"  ]] && bindkey -- "${key[PageDown]}"   end-of-buffer-or-history
[[ -n "${key[Shift-Tab]}" ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Shift-Tab]}"  reverse-menu-complete

# Finally, make sure the terminal is in application mode, when zle is
# active. Only then are the values from $terminfo valid.
if (( ${+terminfo[smkx]} && ${+terminfo[rmkx]} )); then
	autoload -Uz add-zle-hook-widget
	function zle_application_mode_start { echoti smkx }
	function zle_application_mode_stop { echoti rmkx }
	add-zle-hook-widget -Uz zle-line-init zle_application_mode_start
	add-zle-hook-widget -Uz zle-line-finish zle_application_mode_stop
fi


# History - use current line up to cursor to search through history with arrow keys
autoload -Uz up-line-or-beginning-search down-line-or-beginning-search
zle -N up-line-or-beginning-search
zle -N down-line-or-beginning-search

[[ -n "${key[Up]}"   ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Up]}"   up-line-or-beginning-search
[[ -n "${key[Down]}" ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Down]}" down-line-or-beginning-search

“But you can’t copy with Ctrl+C, it’s…” - You can. When something is selected It copies selection to clipboard, otherwise it sends SIGINT.

What terminal emulator are you using where ctrl-c copies instead of sending SIGINT when text is selected? In every one I've ever used, ctrl-c still sends SIGINT even with text selected (and one must must use ctrl-shift-C/ctrl-shift-V to copy/paste).

I don't have any suggestion for getting the behavior you're asking for, but besides the normal ctrl-(shift)-C/V clipboard FYI you also have two other types of clipboard-like things: one which works anywhere (not only in the terminal) and is actually always automatically copying anything you select and lets you paste from it with middle click (this originated with X Windows but i think most Wayland compositors have also implemented it by now), and another which is found in GNU Readline (used by bash and numerous other REPLs) called the "kill buffer" which can be pasted (or "yanked") from and cut (or "killed") to using Emacs keyboard shortcuts (which also include various cursor movement controls).

Notes:

• the kill buffer is local to a given readline context, it's not shared across different shell windows.
• the list of emacs keybindings in that wikipedia article i linked is currently confusingly referring to the kill buffer as "the clipboard"
• you can drastically reconfigure your readline keybindings and other behavior by editing your .inputrc file, but you cannot achieve what you were originally asking for because there is no concept of text selection in readline.

HTH!

This is one of the reasons I prefer using ctrl-insert/shift-insert when it's available. Unfortunately the Insert key seems to have disappeared from a lot of keyboards. Scroll lock sometimes works instead of ctrl-s and ctrl-q. I would be ok remapping ctrl-c to ctrl-break, but I still use ctrl-z to background a job. Would be great if terminals had a quick easy way to select your preference of Microsoft, unix, or CUA shortcuts.

Bash shell uses readline for this, which I would guess is the namesake of PSReadLine:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Readline
https://man.archlinux.org/man/readline.3#DEFAULT_KEY_BINDINGS

Same, I have most of those, but selection with shift

I would just like my inputs to be separate from the outputs. Anyone write a split pane thing?

if you want to customise everything you can do that with .inputrc configuration in bash

I'd prefer the actual cut/copy/paste/undo/redo chars to work, then you can use whatever de tools you want to add your own key combos.

What I really want is to be able to press ctrl to have my ploopy scroll instead of move.

I do wish the new Windows Terminal was available on Linux. I don't need full blown automation in my terminal, just for it to behave a bit more like a text editor.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1536757/selecting-text-in-terminal-without-using-the-mouse

• ctrl + left/right move by word

I will forever hate the way vim moves by the start of the word and not the end of the word... The number of times I want to remove the last letter/s of a word at the end of a line and end up on the next line is too damn high.

Also, don't forget about ctrl + w to delete a full word.