iTerm Tips & Tricks

iTerm2 is an free terminal emulator for Mac OS X. And to this day I’ve yet to find anything that beats it.

Get off my lawn you cool kids with Hyper 🤙~!

Hotkeys

Here’s the list of my most used default hotkeys on a daily basis ;

Commands          | Hot Keys
 — — — — — — — - -| — — — — — — — 
iTerm2 Exposé     | Cmd + Alt + E
Paste history     | Cmd + Shift + H
All panes Input   | Cmd + Alt + I
split pane (h)    | Cmd + D
split pane (v)    | Cmd + Shift + D
next pane         | Cmd + ]
previous pane     | Cmd + [
increase fontsize | Cmd + +
decrease fontsize | Cmd + -
default fontsize  | Cmd + 0
rainbow cursor    | Cmd + /

Do you miss able to jump between words and lines with your default Mac shortcuts? Here’s a list of custom hotkeys I’ve added to make that happen!

Keys          | Action      | Value | Purpose
— — — - - - - | - — — - - — | — — — | — — — - - - - - - - - - - - -
Cmd ←         | “HEX CODE”  | 0x01  | Jump to beginning of the line
Cmd ➝         | “HEX CODE”  | 0x05  | Jump to end of the line 
Cmd Backspace | “HEX CODE”  | 0x15  | Delete current line
Alt ←         | “ESCAPE SEQ”| b     | Jump to beginning of the word
Alt ➝         | “ESCAPE SEQ”| f     | Jump to end of the word
Alt Backspace | “HEX CODE”  | 0x17  | Delete word

iTerm2 Visor

Oh My God this is a must have for me, you can set up iTerm to act like a “visor”, similar to how the games’ Quake / Counter Strike terminal works.

Mmmmh..Quake..

This lets you getting to your thermals quickly among other things you’ve had opened on your screen. No more alt-tabbing~!

First you will need to set up a hotkey, I’ve got mine to use § key, take a look at the top left of the Mac keyboard under the Esc key (Oh MacBook Touch Bar users R.I.P), now ask yourself if you have every pressed this key before? Exactly lets make use out of this expensive key.

In iTerm open up: Preferences >> Keys >> Hotkey

I like to also set the window style to the top of the screen.

Preferences >> Profiles >> Window >> Style >> Full-Width Top of Screen

Quitting iTerm2

This gets in the way every-time I shutdown my Mac, I would get a pop up from iTerm stopping the shutdown process, and i will need to click it twice to close it & let me shutdown properly.

To get rid of this horrible disgusting satan spawn of a feature, you need to uncheck the “Confirm Quit iTerm2” in preference.

Preferences >> General >> Closing

Window Arrangements

If you often find yourself splitting panes or windows in your terminal window, I highly recommend setting up a Window Arrangement profile to save you time every-time you need to bring up all those tasks.

Once your happy with your setup, you can save it by Cmd + Shift + S.

I also set up a hotkey for mine to quickly bring up a new terminal window with the predefined panes.

Do You got any awesome tips I’ve not mentioned? Let everyone know from leaving a comment. I love to find out other’s setups.