Foot: the boundaries of search, selection, and configuration

Foot is a lightweight, fast, Wayland-native terminal emulator whose shortcuts are configured in foot.ini. The bindings in this article were checked against the Foot 1.28 manual; custom configuration can override the defaults. Terminal shortcuts and shortcuts inside the shell belong to different layers.

General Shortcuts#

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl+Shift+c`	Copy selected text to the clipboard
`Ctrl+Shift+v`	Paste from the clipboard
`Shift+Insert`	Paste from the primary selection (select text first, then use this binding to paste)
`Ctrl+Shift+r`	Enter scrollback search mode
`Ctrl+Shift+n`	Open a new terminal window
`Ctrl+Shift+o`	URL mode: highlight all URLs and select one with a key
`Ctrl+Shift+u`	Unicode input mode (enter a code point to insert a character)
`Ctrl+Shift+z`	Jump to the previous shell prompt
`Ctrl+Shift+x`	Jump to the next shell prompt
`Ctrl+plus` / `Ctrl+=` / `Ctrl+KP_Add`	Increase font size
`Ctrl+minus` / `Ctrl+KP_Subtract`	Decrease font size
`Ctrl+0` / `Ctrl+KP_0`	Reset font size
`Shift+Page_Up`	Scroll up one page
`Shift+Page_Down`	Scroll down one page

Prompt jumping with Ctrl+Shift+z/x requires shell support. The shell must send the correct OSC 133 prompt markers. Using Fish alone does not guarantee that every prompt function provides the same markers.

Scrollback Search Mode#

Press Ctrl+Shift+r to enter this mode; the search box appears at the top of the screen.

Navigation and Editing

Shortcut	Action
`Left` / `Ctrl+b`	Move the cursor left
`Right` / `Ctrl+f`	Move the cursor right
`Ctrl+Left` / `Alt+b`	Move the cursor left one word
`Ctrl+Right` / `Alt+f`	Move the cursor right one word
`Home` / `Ctrl+a`	Move the cursor to the start of the search box
`End` / `Ctrl+e`	Move the cursor to the end of the search box
`BackSpace`	Delete the previous character
`Alt+BackSpace` / `Ctrl+BackSpace`	Delete the previous word
`Delete`	Delete the next character
`Alt+d` / `Ctrl+Delete`	Delete the next word
`Ctrl+u`	Delete from the cursor to the beginning
`Ctrl+k`	Delete from the cursor to the end

Searching and Selection

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl+r`	Find the previous match
`Ctrl+s`	Find the next match
`Ctrl+w` / `Ctrl+Shift+Right`	Select to the end of the word (delimited by non-alphanumeric characters)
`Ctrl+Shift+w`	Select to the next whitespace (delimited by whitespace characters)
`Shift+Left`	Extend the selection left by one character
`Shift+Right`	Extend the selection right by one character
`Ctrl+Shift+Left`	Extend the selection left to the start of the word
`Shift+Up`	Extend the selection up by one line
`Shift+Down`	Extend the selection down by one line

Pasting and Exiting

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl+v` / `Ctrl+y` / `Ctrl+Shift+v`	Paste into the search box
`Shift+Insert`	Paste from the primary selection
`Return`	Exit search and copy the current selection to the primary selection
`Escape` / `Ctrl+g` / `Ctrl+c`	Cancel the search

Browsing Context While Searching

You can still scroll the terminal contents while the search box has focus:

Shortcut	Action
`Shift+Page_Up`	Page up
`Shift+Page_Down`	Page down

URL Mode#

Press Ctrl+Shift+o to enter this mode. All detected URLs are highlighted, and each receives a jump label.

Shortcut	Action
`t`	Toggle URL visibility (flashing/steady)
`Escape` / `Ctrl+g` / `Ctrl+c` / `Ctrl+d`	Exit URL mode

Default label keys: s a d f j k l e w c m p g h

Press the corresponding key to open that URL in your browser.

Unicode Input Mode#

Press Ctrl+Shift+u to enter this mode, then type a Unicode code point in hexadecimal to insert the corresponding character. For example, entering 00e9 produces é.

Mouse Controls#

Mouse operation	Action
Left-button drag	Select text by character (copied to the primary selection)
Left-button double-click	Select a whole word
Left-button triple-click	Select a quoted string (the contents enclosed in quotation marks)
Left-button quadruple-click	Select the entire line
`Ctrl` + left-button drag	Block selection (rectangular area)
Right-click	Extend the current selection
`Ctrl` + right-click	Extend by character rather than by word
Middle-click	Paste the primary selection
`Ctrl` + scroll wheel up	Increase font size
`Ctrl` + scroll wheel down	Decrease font size
Scroll wheel up/down	Scroll through the history buffer

Hold Shift to override mouse control by an application inside the terminal, such as vim's mouse mode.

Mouse Selection Comparison#

Operation	Selection range	Example (cursor over `hello_world`)
Double-click (`BTN_LEFT-2`)	Whole word (letters, numbers, and underscores)	`hello_world`
`Ctrl` + double-click	Whitespace-delimited word	`hello_world` (an underscore is not whitespace; use an example containing punctuation to see how this differs from ordinary word selection)
Triple-click (`BTN_LEFT-3`)	Contents enclosed in quotation marks	`"hello world"`
Quadruple-click (`BTN_LEFT-4`)	Entire line	All contents of the current line

Customizable Actions with No Default Binding#

The following actions can be assigned custom bindings in foot.ini under [key-bindings], but have no default shortcuts:

Action	Description
`scrollback-up-half-page`	Scroll up half a page
`scrollback-up-line`	Scroll up one line
`scrollback-down-half-page`	Scroll down half a page
`scrollback-down-line`	Scroll down one line
`scrollback-home`	Jump to the start of the buffer
`scrollback-end`	Jump to the end of the buffer (latest output)
`minimize`	Minimize the window
`maximize`	Maximize the window
`fullscreen`	Full screen
`pipe-visible`	Pipe the visible contents
`pipe-scrollback`	Pipe the entire buffer
`pipe-selected`	Pipe the selected contents
`pipe-command-output`	Pipe command output to an external command
`show-urls-copy`	URL mode: copy instead of opening
`show-urls-persistent`	URL mode: persistent mode
`regex-launch`	Match with a regular expression and open
`regex-copy`	Match with a regular expression and copy
`color-theme-switch-dark/light`	Switch color schemes
`color-theme-toggle`	Toggle between two color schemes
`quit`	Exit the terminal
`noop`	No operation (override an unwanted default binding)

Configuration File Location and Reloading#

# 主配置文件
~/.config/foot/foot.ini

# 验证配置
foot --check-config

# 指定配置启动一个新实例
foot --config ~/.config/foot/foot.ini

General configuration changes should be read by a new instance; server mode also involves the server's configuration lifecycle. In Foot 1.28, SIGUSR1 / SIGUSR2 switch between dark and light color schemes. They are not general configuration-reload signals. Do not send signals to every Foot process in an attempt to “refresh” it.

Management with NixOS / Home Manager

# Home Manager
programs.foot = {
  enable = true;
  settings = {
    main = {
      font = "Iosevka:size=11";
      shell = "fish";
    };
    key-bindings = {
      scrollback-up-line = "Control+Shift+Up";
      scrollback-down-line = "Control+Shift+Down";
    };
  };
};

Tips#

Custom single-line scrolling (the defaults only scroll by page):

[key-bindings]
scrollback-up-line=Control+Shift+Up
scrollback-down-line=Control+Shift+Down

Use Alt as Meta (the default behavior, sending an ESC prefix):

[key-bindings]
# Alt+h → 发送 ESC+h 序列（vim/nvim 中即识别为 Meta+h）
# 这是默认行为，无需配置

Toggle full screen:

[key-bindings]
fullscreen=F11

References & further reading

Adapted from technical notes. Examples use generic names.