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GNU screen terminal commands cheat sheet

Follow me on https://linkedin.com/in/yurislobodyanyuk/ for updates.

Note
 C-a below stands for Ctrl + a keyboard sequence.
Command Description

~/.screenrc & /etc/screenrc

Commands that the screen runs on start up.

screen -ls

List active screen sessions

screen -Q windows

List windows' names inside screen session

screen -S <session name>

Create a new screen session with the name <session name>

screen -x

screen -r <session name>

Attach to the running session, also by its name

screen -dRR

Attach to the screen session, detach on other display if attached. If no session exists, will create a new one.

C-a d

Detach from the session, session keeps running. Here, and further C means Ctrl.

C-a c

Create new window in the session.

C-a C-a

Switch to the previous window.

C-a "

List all windows with option to navigate and enter any of them.

C-w

Show a list of active windows with their numbers.

C-a <number>

Switch to the window number number.

C-a '

Switch to the window by its name.

C-a n

Switch to the next window.

C-a p

Switch to the previous window.

exit

Exit and close current window. If it was the last window in a session, exits screen terminating the session.

C-a k

Kill the current window forcefully (not recommended).

C-a : quit

Quit screen session completely terminating it. Alternatively - exit all screen windows.

C-a A

Rename current window.

C-a S

Split windows display horizontally. Use C-a c to create a new window inside the new split or C-X to close this part of split.

C-a |

Split windows display vertically. Available starting screen 4.01, i.e. not available on Mac 2020 which still uses screen 4.00.

C-a tab

Jump to the next region in a split window display.

C-a Q

Unsplit the window, leaving the current window active.

C-a [ or C-a <esc>

Enter buffer navigation mode to scroll output buffer, copy, edit and paste later. Navigation commands as per vim if Vim is set as editor.<esc> to leave the buffer mode.

<space>

Start/stop selection while in the buffer mode to select the text. Press <space> or <Enter> to copy the selected text. E.g. to select/copy the whole buffer: C-a [ gg <space> G <space> <esc>

C-a ]

Paste the selected text at the cursor of the terminal, or create a new window and say start Vim there and paste into it while in Insert mode.

C-a h

Dump the contents of the currently visible terminal to hardcopy.<n> file, where n is auto-incrementing number of your window.

C-a H

Start/end logging all output of the curent window into a file screenlog.N where N is the window number. The data is appended, not overwritten if the file exists. Output printed before that is not logged.

C-a a

Send Ctrl-a sequence to the shell in the window, useful to jump to the beginning of the line.

C-a M

Monitor window for activity. When enabled, will notify you of any acitvity while you work in other window.

C-a _

Monitor window for 30 seconds of silence, will notify you in any other window as Window 0: silence for 30 seconds

C-a ?

Show all key bindings help.

Save session state

This is not possible. If you use the same layout each session, you can put start up commands to re-create it in .screenrc file in your home directory, but still - you cannot save the current session state, i.e. contents of the windows and their layout.

Sharing session (e.g. for pair programming/tutoring)

Original session (say user1):

  1. Set suid root bit on screen binary: sudo chmod +s /usr/bin/screen

  2. Inside session you want to share: C-a : then multiuser on to enable sharing session.

  3. Add usernames to share the session with: C-a : acladd <username>

Connecting user (say user2):

  1. Run in shell: screen -x <sharing username>/, in our example screen -x user1/

Sets up sharing the session. Another user connecting to the session views real-time its output, can enter and run commands himself. Also see aclchg, acldel, aclgrp for controlling what the connecting user can and cannot do. E.g. to remove write permissions from all users on all windows: :aclchg * -w #

C-a *

See who is connected to your shared screen session.

Follow me on https://linkedin.com/in/yurislobodyanyuk/ for updates.