Creating keyboard shortcuts for Terminal

command linekeyboardshortcutterminal

Just to ensure that what I am saying is getting clearly across, I am not referring to things like iCanHazShortcut that allows you to execute a command anywhere through a keyboard shortcut.

I wanted to know if there is a way to have keyboard shortcuts that run a command in the current Terminal tab. I am fine with using 3rd-party applications.

Best Answer

No need of 3rd-party apps.

You can go to the Preferences Tab(Menu -> Terminal -> Preferences or ⌘,), then go to Profiles -> Keyboard. There you can create shortcuts. Enter your command and end with an enter.

For example, if you want to run ls each time you press F1, select F1 in the Key tab, and press "ls <enter>", which appears like ls\015.

I didn't find a way to bind characters though, but using all these keys should be enough.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Changing keyboard shortcut for cycling through windows? (Lion)

Many applications like Terminal also have a menu item like Window > Cycle Through Windows. It stays assigned to ⌘` even if you change the shortcut in the Keyboard & Text Input preferences.

You could add a custom shortcut for Cycle Through Windows in the Application Shortcuts preferences, or disable it with defaults write -g NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add "Cycle Through Windows" nul.

You could also force TotalTerminal to use ⌘` by editing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist directly.

<key>ToggleVisor</key>
<dict>
    <key>KeyCode</key>
    <integer>50</integer>
    <key>Modifiers</key>
    <integer>9437184</integer>
</dict>

Jump the pointer long distances with keyboard

Karabiner

Karabiner comes with everything you need—a way to define a shortcut, and a way to move the mouse. The warp-mouse-cursor-position utility lives in /Applications/Karabiner.app/Contents/Library/utilities/bin/.

It has a default setting to warp the mouse to the center of the current window by tapping fn or holding ' or /, but for a customized version, add this to your ~/Library/Application Support/Karabiner/private.xml: (After you’re done, go into Karabiner’s preferences and check the box inside Mouse Warping.)

<item>
    <name>Mouse Warping</name>
    <vkopenurldef>
      <name>KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_SHELL_mousetowindowcenter</name>
      <url type="shell">
        <![CDATA[
          /Applications/Karabiner.app/Contents/Library/utilities/bin/warp-mouse-cursor-position front_window middle 0 center 0
        ]]>
      </url>
    </vkopenurldef>
    <item>
        <identifier>private.f14_mousetowindowcenter</identifier>
        <name>F14 to move the mouse to the center of the current window</name>
        <autogen>
            --KeyToKey--
            KeyCode::F14,
            KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_SHELL_mousetowindowcenter
        </autogen>
    </item>
</item>

With Karabiner's utility, you can use the screen option like this:

warp-mouse-cursor-position screen NUM VERTICAL X_OFFSET HORIZONTAL Y_OFFSET

VERTICAL can be top, middle, or bottom, and HORIZONTAL can be left, center, or right.

X_OFFSET and Y_OFFSET can be numerical values, like +10 or -10. Just be careful to put the arguments in the right order—they seem oddly switched.

(For the front window, just use front_window instead of screen.)

cliclick

Probably the most popular way, but in order to use it for moving to the middle of a window, you’d need an AppleScript to get the bounds of the current window, then calculate the center, etc.