qwen-code/docs/users/reference/keyboard-shortcuts.md

Qwen Code Keyboard Shortcuts

This document lists the available keyboard shortcuts in Qwen Code.

General

Shortcut	Description
Esc	Close dialogs and suggestions.
Ctrl+C	Cancel the ongoing request and clear the input. Press twice to exit the application.
Ctrl+D	Exit the application if the input is empty. Press twice to confirm.
Ctrl+L	Clear the screen.
Ctrl+O	Open/close the full-detail transcript view (a scrollable, frozen snapshot showing every tool's complete output and full thinking). Press again, or Esc/q, to close.
Ctrl+S	Stashes non-empty input for the current project and restores it on the next launch. With empty input, allows long responses to print fully, disabling truncation. Use your terminal's scrollback to view the entire output.
Ctrl+T	Toggle the display of tool descriptions.
Ctrl+B	While a foreground shell command is running: promote it to a background task. The child keeps running, the agent's turn unblocks, and the shell appears in /tasks + the Background tasks dialog. No-op when no shell is executing — Ctrl+B then falls through to its prompt-area binding (cursor-left).
Alt/Option+M	Toggle Markdown output between rich rendered previews and raw/source mode. On macOS, the terminal must send Option as Meta.
Shift+Tab (Tab on Windows)	Cycle approval modes (plan → default → auto-edit → auto → yolo)

Input Prompt

Shortcut	Description
!	Toggle shell mode when the input is empty.
?	Toggle keyboard shortcuts display when the input is empty.
Ctrl+Enter / Cmd+Enter / Shift+Enter / Ctrl+J	Insert a newline.
Down Arrow	Row down, then snap to end, then history next.
Enter	Submit the current prompt.
Meta+Delete / Ctrl+Delete	Delete the word to the right of the cursor.
Tab	Autocomplete the current suggestion if one exists.
Up Arrow	Row up, then snap to start, then history prev.
Ctrl+A / Home	Move the cursor to the beginning of the line.
Ctrl+B / Left Arrow	Move the cursor one character to the left.
Ctrl+C	Clear the input prompt
Esc (double press)	Clear the input prompt.
Ctrl+D / Delete	Delete the character to the right of the cursor.
Ctrl+E / End	Move the cursor to the end of the line.
Ctrl+F / Right Arrow	Move the cursor one character to the right.
Ctrl+H / Backspace	Delete the character to the left of the cursor.
Ctrl+K	Delete from the cursor to the end of the line.
Ctrl+Left Arrow / Meta+Left Arrow / Meta+B	Move the cursor one word to the left.
Ctrl+N	Row down, then snap to end, then history next.
Ctrl+P	Row up, then snap to start, then history prev.
Ctrl+R	Reverse search through input/shell history.
Ctrl+Y	Retry the last failed request.
Ctrl+Right Arrow / Meta+Right Arrow / Meta+F	Move the cursor one word to the right.
Ctrl+U	Delete from the cursor to the beginning of the line.
Ctrl+V (Windows: Alt+V)	Paste clipboard content. If the clipboard contains an image, it will be saved and a reference to it will be inserted in the prompt.
Ctrl+W / Meta+Backspace / Ctrl+Backspace	Delete the word to the left of the cursor.
Ctrl+X	Open the current input in an external editor.

Suggestions

Shortcut	Description
Down Arrow / Ctrl+N	Navigate down through the suggestions.
Tab / Enter	Accept the selected suggestion.
Up Arrow / Ctrl+P	Navigate up through the suggestions.

Radio Button Select

Shortcut	Description
Down Arrow / j / Ctrl+N	Move selection down.
Enter	Confirm selection.
Up Arrow / k / Ctrl+P	Move selection up.
1-9	Select an item by its number.
(multi-digit)	For items with numbers greater than 9, press the digits in quick succession to select the corresponding item.

History scrollback

Active when ui.useTerminalBuffer is enabled (Settings → UI → Virtualized History), screen reader mode is off, and Qwen Code is running in a compatible interactive terminal (stdout is a TTY, CI is inactive, and TERM is not dumb), which is the default for ordinary non-screen-reader sessions. In that mode conversation history is rendered inside an in-app viewport instead of the host terminal scrollback, so the keys below replace the terminal's native scroll.

Shortcut	Description
Shift+Up	Scroll history up one line.
Shift+Down	Scroll history down one line.
PgUp	Scroll history up one page (viewport height).
PgDn	Scroll history down one page (viewport height).
Ctrl+Home	Jump to the top of the conversation.
Ctrl+End	Jump to the bottom (and re-engage live auto-follow).
Mouse wheel	Scroll history (3 lines per tick).

When ui.useTerminalBuffer is on, the terminal forwards mouse events to qwen-code so the wheel can drive the in-app viewport. As a side effect, native click-and-drag text selection is consumed by the program, so qwen-code provides its own: drag to select text in the history viewport, double-click to select a word, triple-click to select a line. The selection is highlighted and copied to the clipboard when you release the mouse (works locally, over SSH via OSC 52, and inside tmux). A single click clears the selection; scrolling or new output clears it too. Selection is limited to the visible viewport for now. You can still fall back to the terminal's own selection by holding Shift (or Option on macOS Terminal / iTerm) while dragging.

tmux trackpad scrolling

Inside tmux, some terminals translate trackpad or wheel gestures into plain Up Arrow and Down Arrow sequences before qwen-code sees them. Those bytes are identical to real arrow-key presses, so qwen-code cannot tell whether you meant to scroll the viewport or navigate prompt history.

If trackpad scrolling changes the prompt history in tmux, make sure ui.useTerminalBuffer is enabled; then use Shift+Up / Shift+Down, or the mouse wheel when tmux forwards wheel events to the app. If you prefer host scrollback, adjust your tmux mouse bindings for wheel events.

IDE Integration

Shortcut	Description
Ctrl+G	See context CLI received from IDE