How to efficiently switch between several terminal windows using the keyboard?

Question

Alt+Tab lets me only switch between windows belonging to different applications.

I often use about four terminal bound applications at the same time (e.g. IPython, VIM, fish for system and fish for git).

Even using the mouse, clicking the terminal icon on the launcher being offered takes time to decide which is which. But I don't know so far any way to switch in this case using my keyboard only.

How to handle multiple terminals (and instances of same application in general) efficiently using the keyboard?

With respect to the terminal special case - is there a terminal application allowing sperate terminals in tabs?

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And the Oscar goes to ...

tmux

Answer 1

In linux almost every terminal support tab, for example in Ubuntu with default terminal you can press:

1. Ctrl + Shift + T or click File / Open Tab

2. and you can switch between them using Alt + $ {tab_number} (*eg. Alt + 1)

also you might want to take a look at terminator

Answer 2

You can use Alt+tilde (tilde = Grave) to switch between windows of the current application. Note that tilde is always the key above tab, it is a tilde in an US english keyboard, but it can be anything in other languages.

If you press the Windows key for a while unity will show you all it's keyboard shortcuts in an overlay:

Finally, near all terminal applications support tabs. The default one in Ubuntu does.

Answer 3

Have you Tried to open multiple terminals using:

Ctrl + Shift + T

Then switching among them using:

Ctrl + PageUP

And

Ctrl + PageDown

I usually use this scenario at least for me

Answer 4

Not the answer you are looking for, but I think it's worth considering:
Instead of multiple tabs, you can use screen and byobu:

screen lets you manage multiple terminals in the same window. In the previous image you can see I have 3 terminals (0 tcpdump, 1 top and 2 Node.js). You can switch between them with Ctrl+a+{index of the terminal} for example (there are a lot of commands).
byobu is a wrapper for screen, it adds some color, more commands and a help menu. But you can use screen alone, without byobu.
Here there is a tutorial on how to install and use screen and byobu:

• How to Install and Use Screen on an Ubuntu Cloud Server

Answer 5

Alt+` i.e. Alt+Tildeallows you to switch between the windows of the same application.

Or you can organize those windows in different workspaces and use the keyboard shortcuts to go to the proper workspace; I have four workspaces and use Ctrl+Alt+→, Ctrl+Alt+↓, Ctrl+Alt+←, Ctrl+Alt+↑ to switch between them. This could comparatively prove to be a faster way to go to the right application window when you have quite a few to handle._{You can specify the number of workspace to be used in your system.}

To swap the windows between the workspaces I use Shift+Ctrl+Alt+→, Shift+Ctrl+Alt+↓, Shift+Ctrl+Alt+←, Shift+Ctrl+Alt+↑.

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These are some terminal emulators that allow multiple tab feature:

• konsole
• guake
• yakuake

Answer 6

In KDE it is Alt+`: System Settings → Workspace Appearance and Behavior → Window Behavior :

Answer 7

I suggest you to try out Guake, which can be installed from the software center

sudo apt-get install guake

Here's a screenshot

I personally switch tabs by using Ctrl+Page up and Ctrl+Page down, which is also the default as far as I remember.

Also I've bound Guake to the menu button, which I always considered useless. Now I can toggle the terminal with a single button and feel like I have super powers.

Answer 8

Create a new terminal window: Ctrl+Shift+n

Create a new terminal tab: Ctrl+Shift+t

Close a single terminal tab or window: Ctrl+d

Switch between terminal windows: Alt+ `

Switch between terminal tabs: Ctrl+ Page down (left), Ctrl+Page up (right), or Alt+#, e.g. Alt+1

Answer 9

I've found alt + f6 works as well. This can also be changed to whatever keyboard shortcut you wish in settings by navigating to settings>devices>keyboard and scrolling to the shortcut: Switch windows of an app directly, found under the navigation heading.

Answer 10

Raffael asked:

is there a terminal application allowing seperate terminals in tabs?

I really like konsole for that.

Keyboard Shortcuts (which also can be changed!)

New Tab

• STRG + Shift + T

Change Tab

• Shift + Left / Right

Move Tab

• STRG + Change Tab

Close Tab

• Type 'exit' as often as you need or STRG + Shift + W

You can also split view (vertically or horizontally)

• STRG + ( or ) (means for me STRG + Shift + 8 or 9)

and close split view

• STRG + Shift + S

And try it together with Gnome Extension Putwindows

Answer 11

Switch between open instances of one program:

Alt + `

Switch between open tabs of one program instance:

Ctrl + Tab

Switch between programs:

Alt + Tab or Super + Tab

Answer 12

Following commands will help you a lot:

Create new terminal window in user directory: Ctrl + Alt + T

Create new terminal window in current working directory: Ctrl + Shift + N

Create new terminal tab in current working directory:Ctrl + shift + T

Minimize a terminal window or (any open window) : super(window key) + H

Switch between windows of different apps: Alt + tab

Switch between windows of terminal(windows of current open app): Alt + tilde

Answer 13

Here is a trick that I use:

1. Install two (or more) different terminal applications and put both of them into your favourite activities list (the list on the left side of your screen). Put them at the top so that they would get assigned numbers 1 and 2:

2. Pressing windows + 1 / windows + 2 will let you switch between the first / second terminal applications.

In this way, you can shift between console screens using a keyboard without losing the view of the previous one.

Answer 14

Simply hold Alt (after releasing Tab and choosing CLI window(s)) a bit longer and you will get opportunity to choose between multiple CLI windows...

Answer 15

My workaround is to use xterm as wrapper. As much as I like grouping feature sometimes a window better to be ungrouped. I.e. I use midnight commander as a file manager and it goes grouped with other terminal windows which is not nice

So what I did is:

1. leave gnome-terminal as default terminal app
2. edit /usr/share/applications/mc.desktop to execute mc within xterm session Exec=xterm -geometry 152x42 -fa 'Monospace' -fs 19 -T "Midnight Commander" -n "Midnight Commander" -e mc

You can do something like this to your app. Having it wrapped to xterm makes it to be put to separate group under alt-tab. Its not a flawless solution, you'll need to deal with colour scheme, copying to buffer may give you a troble, but generally its an ok workaround.