Visual Mode

Visual mode gives you keyboard-driven text selection, inspired by Vim. Select text, search the scrollback, and copy — all without touching the mouse.

Entering visual mode

Press Ctrl+Shift+Space to enter copy mode. You’ll see a cursor you can move around the terminal.

Navigation

Key	Action
h / Left	Move left
j / Down	Move down
k / Up	Move up
l / Right	Move right
w	Jump forward one word
b	Jump backward one word
e	Jump to end of word
0	Jump to start of line
^	Jump to first non-blank character
$	Jump to end of line
g	Jump to top of scrollback
G	Jump to bottom

Numeric prefixes work — 5j moves down 5 lines, 3w jumps 3 words forward.

Selection modes

From copy mode, press one of these to start selecting:

Key	Mode
v	Character-wise selection
V	Line-wise selection
Ctrl+V	Block (rectangular) selection

Move the cursor to extend your selection, then press y to copy it to the clipboard.

Text objects

While in a selection mode, you can use text object modifiers:

Key	Action
i + object	Select inner text object (e.g. iw for inner word, i" for inner quotes)
a + object	Select around text object (e.g. aw for word + surrounding space)

In-terminal search

While in copy mode, you can search the scrollback:

Key	Action
/	Search forward
?	Search backward
n	Next match
N	Previous match

The search query appears in the status bar, and matches are highlighted as you type. Search is smart-case — lowercase queries are case-insensitive, queries with uppercase letters are case-sensitive.

Exiting

Key	Action
y	Yank (copy) selection and exit
Escape	Step back through modes (selection → copy mode → normal)

Example workflow

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Space to enter copy mode
2. Use / to search for a string — e.g., /error
3. Press n to jump through matches
4. Press v to start character selection
5. Extend the selection with movement keys
6. Press y to copy to clipboard

Keybindings

The key to enter copy mode can be rebound:

[keybindings]
copy_mode = "ctrl+shift+space"