Claude Code Keyboard Shortcuts

Press Shift+Tab from the input prompt to toggle plan mode on or off. In plan mode Claude proposes a step-by-step plan before touching files. Press Enter to approve and execute, or Esc to reject and keep iterating on the plan.

Type @ followed by the path — for example @src/app.tsx or @README.md. Claude Code expands the reference and reads the file before responding. Tab completes paths the same way your shell does.

Lines that start with # are added to memory instead of being sent as a normal message. Claude Code asks whether to save the note to project memory (CLAUDE.md in the repo) or user memory (your personal CLAUDE.md in ~/.claude). Use # for facts you want remembered across turns, like coding conventions or commands.

Start the line with ! to run it in bash mode — for example !ls or !git status. The command runs in the same working directory as your session and the output is shared back to Claude, so you can ask follow-up questions about it.

Press Ctrl+D, type /exit, or type /quit. If a request is running, press Esc once to cancel it, or Ctrl+C to interrupt the underlying process. Sessions are saved automatically — use claude --continue to pick up where you left off.

Press Esc once to cancel the current request or stop Claude while it's working — this keeps you in the session. Ctrl+C interrupts the underlying process, and pressing Ctrl+C again (or Ctrl+D) exits Claude Code entirely. So Esc to stop a task, Ctrl+D or /exit to leave.

Press Shift+Enter to add a new line without submitting. If your terminal sends the message instead (some do not distinguish Shift+Enter from Enter), type a backslash \ and then press Enter, which works everywhere. Enter on its own always sends.

Type /compact. Claude Code summarizes the conversation so far and keeps the summary in context, freeing tokens for new work. Use /clear if you want a completely fresh slate instead.

Yes. Claude Code is a command-line tool for agentic coding tasks — running in your terminal, reading and editing files in your project, executing shell commands, and using MCP tools. The Claude desktop and web apps are general-purpose chat interfaces with their own keyboard shortcuts.

Run /keybindings, which creates or opens ~/.claude/keybindings.json. The file holds a bindings array, and each block names a context plus a map of keystrokes to actions — for example binding ctrl+e to chat:externalEditor in the Chat context. Changes are detected automatically and applied without restarting Claude Code. Contexts include Global, Chat, Autocomplete, Settings, Confirmation, Tabs, Help, Transcript, HistorySearch and Task, among others.

Four. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+D are hardcoded interrupt and exit. Ctrl+M cannot be rebound because terminals send it as an identical byte to Enter — both are carriage return, so they are indistinguishable. And Caps Lock is never delivered to terminal applications at all. Everything else is fair game.

Because most terminals never send that modifier. The cmd group — cmd, command, super, win — is only detected in terminals that report the Super modifier, such as those supporting the Kitty keyboard protocol or xterm's modifyOtherKeys mode. For a binding that works everywhere, use ctrl or meta instead. Note meta maps to Alt on Windows and Linux and to Option on macOS.

Set the action to null instead of a string. There is a catch with chords: a chord in any active context keeps its prefix reserved, so to reclaim a prefix as a single key you must unbind every chord that uses it, in each context that defines it. The default Ctrl+X family spans two contexts — ctrl+x ctrl+k and ctrl+x ctrl+e in Chat, and ctrl+x ctrl+b in Task — so freeing ctrl+x means unbinding all three.

They can, and the docs name three. Ctrl+B is the tmux prefix, so you press it twice to send it through. Ctrl+A is the GNU screen prefix. Ctrl+Z is the Unix suspend signal. Claude Code validates your keybindings file on load and warns about reserved-shortcut conflicts, multiplexer conflicts, invalid context names, duplicate bindings and parse errors — start it with --debug to see the details.