Claude Code keyboard shortcuts and keybindings.json

The shortcuts, by where you are

Claude Code matches a keypress against the context that currently has focus, which is why the same key can mean two things. The tables below start with the keys that work everywhere, then the ones that only work inside a particular surface. Anthropic’s own note leads the list: shortcuts vary by platform and terminal, and in fullscreen rendering you can press ? in the transcript viewer to see the ones available there.

General controls

The keys you type with

Two details matter when a word shortcut surprises you. A word is a run of letters and digits, so punctuation separates words: with src/utils/foo.ts in the prompt, Alt+B stops at the start of ts, foo, utils and src, while Ctrl+W ignores punctuation and removes the whole path in one press. From 2.1.261 onwards the word shortcuts follow these readline rules, and the earlier keybindingFlavor setting is deprecated and has no effect. The word shortcuts cannot be remapped, because the keybindings file has no actions for them; undo can, through chat:undo.

Five ways to start a new line

Quick keys and the surfaces behind them

Rebind one: the file, in ninety seconds

Run /keybindings and Claude Code opens ~/.claude/keybindings.json, creating it if it is not there yet. That is your Claude Code configuration directory, which is ~/.claude unless you moved it with CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR; on Windows the default is %USERPROFILE%\.claude. The file is an object with a bindings array. Each entry names one context and holds a map from a keystroke to an action, and the action names follow a namespace:action shape such as chat:submit.

{
  "$schema": "https://www.schemastore.org/claude-code-keybindings.json",
  "$docs": "https://code.claude.com/docs/en/keybindings",
  "bindings": [
    {
      "context": "Chat",
      "bindings": {
        "ctrl+e": "chat:externalEditor",
        "ctrl+s": null
      }
    }
  ]
}

That example does two useful things at once. ctrl+e is given to chat:externalEditor, and ctrl+s is set to null, which removes the default stash binding rather than replacing it. The optional $schema line gives your editor autocompletion for the action names, and $docs is a documentation pointer for whoever opens the file next. Save it, and the change applies without restarting Claude Code, because the file is watched.

The context decides when your key fires

A context is a place that can hold keyboard focus, and a binding in one context does nothing in another. These are the ones Anthropic documents, and the list is the fastest way to see why a binding feels dead:

Two footnotes keep that table honest. Agent view arrived with Claude Code 2.1.257, and while it is open it takes its own bindings ahead of a Chat or Global binding on the same key, so Ctrl+S switches the session grouping there instead of stashing your prompt. And a handful of action names still load without error even though Claude Code does nothing with them, such as confirm:previousField and permission:toggleDebug, so an old file can name one and keep working.

What you can bind: the action names

You cannot invent an action. The file accepts the names Anthropic documents, and binds them by namespace, so the list is worth skimming before you reach for a key. Every row below is bindable today, and the default column is what happens if you never touch the file.

Chords, modifiers and the odd key you forgot you had

A keystroke is written in lowercase with + between modifiers. ctrl and control both work, as do alt, opt, option and meta for the same physical key, which is Alt on Windows and Linux and Option on macOS. Case does not matter to the parser, so K is k; to require Shift with a letter, write shift+k.

Two traps sit in that paragraph. The cmd, command, super and win names only work in a terminal that reports the Super modifier, such as one using the Kitty keyboard protocol or xterm’s modifyOtherKeys mode; most terminals never send it, so a cmd binding is invisible on them and ctrl or meta is the portable choice. And the special key names are a fixed list: escape or esc, enter or return, tab, space, the four arrows, pageup, pagedown, home, end, backspace, delete, and the mouse-wheel events wheelup and wheeldown.

A chord is a sequence of keystrokes separated by spaces, such as ctrl+k ctrl+s. Press each part within 3 seconds of the one before it: wait longer and Claude Code cancels the chord and says so. Unbinding every chord that shares a prefix frees that prefix, which is the only way to reuse ctrl+x as a single key, because Claude Code ships several ctrl+x chords across different contexts.

What the file cannot change

Anthropic’s reserved table has seven rows. Ctrl+C is the hardcoded interrupt and Ctrl+D the hardcoded exit. Ctrl+M always arrives as Enter. Ctrl+[ always arrives as Escape, which needs 2.1.242 or later in a terminal using the Kitty protocol. Ctrl+I always arrives as Tab. Ctrl+H sends the ASCII backspace byte, and how Claude Code reads it on Windows depends on your terminal and the CLAUDE_CODE_BS_AS_CTRL_BACKSPACE environment variable. Caps Lock is the seventh: a terminal application never receives it.

Three more keys are not reserved but are likely to be taken by something else. Ctrl+B is the tmux prefix, so inside tmux you press it twice to send it through. Ctrl+A is the GNU screen prefix. Ctrl+Z is the Unix suspend signal, which is why it stops Claude Code rather than doing anything inside it.

And the whole text-editing table is out of reach: the keybindings file carries no actions for Ctrl+A, Ctrl+E, Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+Y, Alt+B, Alt+F and Alt+D, so there is nothing to map them to. The undo row of that table is the one exception with an action of its own, chat:undo. Vim mode works the same way in reverse: when you turn it on with the Editor mode setting in /config, vim handles input at the text level and the keybindings file handles actions at the component level, and the two do not overlap. In vim mode Esc leaves INSERT for NORMAL and does not trigger chat:cancel, and vim keys themselves cannot be remapped through the file; a two-key INSERT-mode sequence such as jj needs the vimInsertModeRemaps setting instead.

When a binding does nothing

Claude Code checks the file every time it loads and writes a warning to the debug log rather than failing loudly, which is why a broken binding feels like silence. Start it with --debug to read those warnings. The causes Anthropic lists, in the order worth checking:

One case looks like a bug and is not. A binding on a bare letter, digit or Space does not steal typing inside a text field, such as the Other answer to a question Claude asks: while that field has focus, a printable key without Ctrl, Alt or Cmd goes to the field and never reaches your binding. Keys that type nothing, like Enter and Esc, and any key pressed with a modifier, still fire.

The terminal settings several shortcuts depend on

On macOS, most terminals do not send Option as a modifier by default, which is why Option+P, Option+Enter and the Alt+B, Alt+F and Alt+D word keys do nothing on a fresh setup. The terminal setting is usually labelled “Use Option as Meta Key”, and the location differs by terminal:

• Apple Terminal: Settings, then Profiles, then Keyboard, then “Use Option as Meta Key”. Accepting Claude Code’s first-run prompt does this for you through /terminal-setup, which also turns off the audible bell.
• iTerm2: Settings, then Profiles, then Keys, then General, and set both the Left and Right Option key to “Esc+”. Running /terminal-setup here also lets applications read the clipboard, which the /copy command needs.
• VS Code: add "terminal.integrated.macOptionIsMeta": true to your settings.
• Ghostty, Kitty and others: look for an Option-as-Alt or Option-as-Meta setting in the terminal’s own configuration.

Shift+Enter has its own map. It works with no setup in Ghostty, Kitty, iTerm2, WezTerm, Warp, Apple Terminal and Windows Terminal, and in other terminals that speak the kitty keyboard protocol, such as foot and Alacritty 0.16 or later, from Claude Code 2.1.269 onwards. In VS Code, Cursor, Devin Desktop, Alacritty before 0.16 and Zed it needs /terminal-setup once, which writes a Shift+Enter keybinding into that terminal’s own configuration file; in Zed it backs up your keymap.json first if it has to change it. It is not available at all in gnome-terminal or the JetBrains IDEs, where Ctrl+J and the backslash trick remain. And inside tmux, Shift+Enter needs the tmux configuration even when the outer terminal supports it.

Fullscreen rendering brings its own scroll keys, and a MacBook keyboard is a known gap. PgUp and PgDn move half a screen, Ctrl+Home jumps to the start and Ctrl+End returns to the latest message, and on a keyboard without those keys you send them with Fn plus an arrow. Ctrl+Fn+Right does not reach Claude Code on macOS, so a MacBook has no working jump-to-bottom chord unless you bind scroll:bottom to something your keyboard can send. Cmd+K behaves like Ctrl+L wherever the terminal passes it through, while iTerm2 and Terminal.app handle Cmd+K themselves and clear their own screen.

In the VS Code extension

The extension ships its own command shortcuts, and several of them depend on which panel has focus: your cursor in a code file means the editor is focused, your cursor in the prompt box means Claude is. These are the ones worth learning.

Two of those rows are conditional. Cmd+N or Ctrl+N only starts a conversation while Claude has focus and the enableNewConversationShortcut setting is on, because it is off by default; the reopen shortcut is on by default and can be turned off with enableReopenClosedSessionShortcut. On macOS Tahoe and later the system Game Overlay is bound to Cmd+Esc and intercepts it before VS Code sees it, so either clear the Game Overlay checkbox under System Settings, then Keyboard, then Keyboard Shortcuts, then Game Controllers, or rebind “Claude Code: Focus input” in the editor’s own Keyboard Shortcuts editor.

The extension also reads your keybindings.json, from version 2.1.309 onwards. That is what makes the common “stop Ctrl+J adding a newline” fix work: set "ctrl+j": null in a Chat block, save, and the prompt box stops inserting the line. If it still inserts one, reload the editor window and check the extension log for a warning that names the file it read, because an older extension ignores the file entirely.

What other people are reporting

The issue tracker carries the same confusion this page is about, and the reports below are their authors’ own descriptions, linked with the state and counts the issue showed on the day this page was checked. None of them is an Anthropic statement.

• Issue 25087, opened 2026-02-11 and closed 2026-08-18, 56 reactions and 18 comments: keybindings.json ignored in the Claude desktop app, with Enter and Shift+Enter both submitting. It is a reminder that the file configures the surfaces that read it, and the desktop app is not the CLI.
• Issue 90878, opened 2026-08-31 and still open, 8 reactions and 3 comments: the same complaint, filed again and marked by its author as a duplicate of the closed report and of #33034.
• Issue 64804, opened 2026-06-02 and still open, 7 reactions and 12 comments: Enter inserts a newline instead of submitting, and the keybindings.json override is ignored.
• Issue 87888, opened 2026-08-19 and still open, 3 reactions and 3 comments: Ctrl+Enter and Shift+Enter never reach the keybinding matcher under Windows Terminal, and a Ctrl+J rebind is ignored. That is the terminal-delivery problem, not a file problem.
• Issue 3464, opened 2025-07-14 and closed the next day, 15 reactions and 9 comments: Shift+Tab not working in Windows Terminal, which is the same class as the Alt+M fallback on Windows without VT input mode.

Read together they split in two. The first three are about a surface not reading the file at all, and the last two are about a terminal not delivering the key, which no binding can fix. Both halves point at the same first check: confirm the surface, then confirm the terminal, before editing the file a third time.

Omniscio, and the other set of shortcuts

Omniscio runs Claude Code sessions, and it has a shortcut system of its own. The two are separate: ~/.claude/keybindings.json configures Claude Code’s own interface, while Omniscio’s keys drive the app around it, and rebinding one does not change the other. Omniscio collects its bindings in a registry with a default per action, and you rebind them in Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.

• Its own registry. Every Omniscio shortcut is a declared action with a default binding, gathered into one action list, and your overrides are merged over the defaults at runtime rather than editing them in place. The full list, grouped by where each key applies, is on the keyboard shortcuts page.
• What the backup carries. The backup mirror captures ~/.claude/settings.json and ~/.claude/keybindings.json under a narrow allowlist, so a restore on another machine brings your Claude Code bindings with it. A Replace restore overwrites them with the backed-up copies; a Merge restore leaves any settings.json or keybindings.json already on this machine untouched, whether you edited it or not. Omniscio’s own shortcuts never go into either file.
• Only the home folder. The mirror only reads ~/.claude in your home folder and ignores CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, so a keybindings.json kept in a moved config folder is never backed up, and a restore cannot bring it back. The backup mirror page covers what the allowlist carries and what it deliberately leaves out.
• The inbuilt terminal is a shell, not a prompt. Omniscio’s inbuilt terminal, off until its Labs flag is on, translates Alt plus Left or Right, and Alt plus Backspace or Delete, into the readline sequences that word-wise editing uses, so those keys work in a shell running inside it. It does not turn that shell into Claude Code’s prompt, and no Omniscio setting changes what keybindings.json does.

If you came here looking for one place to change every shortcut on your machine, that place does not exist: Claude Code’s file covers Claude Code, and Omniscio’s Settings covers Omniscio. The good news is that neither needs a restart, and running several sessions at once does not change either one, because the bindings follow the surface rather than the window.