Listen — it’s not that I don’t want to use Vim keybindings. I’ve done it before. They’re fun. It’s kind of like giving your text editor a manual transmission. The reason I’m not using them now is because I don’t want one way of working with text on my computer which works with my editor, and another way that works everywhere else.
Something I’m always surprised more developer-type people don’t seem to know about is that macOS has pretty good support for Emacs-style keybindings built in, and they pretty much work with every text field in the system.
Three that I use a lot are Control-A to go to the beginning of a line, Control-E to go to the end, and Control-K to cut to the end of the current line. You can even use Control-Y once you’ve done that to paste what you just cut.
Apple has a whole documentation page listing these, along with a ton of others, but here are a few of the Emacs-style ones I could pick out. This document really highlights something I always notice when using any operating system other than macOS, which is how much less consistent and extensive keyboard support seems to be on every other system.
| Shortcut | Function |
|---|---|
Control-A |
Move to the beginning of the line or paragraph. |
Control-E |
Move to the end of a line or paragraph. |
Control-F |
Move one character forward. |
Control-B |
Move one character backward. |
Control-P |
Move up one line. |
Control-N |
Move down one line. |
Control-K |
Delete the text between the insertion point and the end of the line or paragraph. |
Control-D |
Delete the character to the right of the insertion point. Or use Fn-Delete. |
Control-H |
Delete the character to the left of the insertion point. Or use Delete. |
Control-T |
Swap the character behind the insertion point with the character in front of the insertion point. |
Control-O |
Insert a new line after the insertion point. |
Control-L |
Center the cursor or selection in the visible area. |
Control-U |
Clear the entire line before the cursor (in Terminal and some text fields). |
Option-Delete |
Delete the word to the left of the insertion point. |
Collin Donnell 