Screen Command Cheat Sheet

 

Escape key

All screen commands are prefixed by an escape key, by default C-a (that's Control-a, sometimes written ^a). To send a literal C-a to the programs in screen, use C-a a. This is useful when when working with screen within screen. For example C-a a n will move screen to a new window on the screen within screen.

Getting in

screen -S <name>	Start a new screen session with session name
screen -ls	List running sessions/screens
screen -x	Attach to a running session
screen -r <name>	Attach to a running session with name
screen -dRR	The "ultimate attach" Attaches to a screen session. If the session is attached elsewhere, detaches that other display. If no session exists, creates one. If multiple sessions exist, uses the first one.

Getting out

screen -d <name>	Detach a running session
C-a d	Detach
C-a D D	Detach and logout (quick exit)
“C-a : quit”	Exit screen or exit all of the programs in screen
C-a C-\	Force-exit screen (not recommended)

Help

C-a ?

See help Lists keybindings. The man page is the complete reference, but it's very long.

Window Management

C-a c	Create new window
C-a C-a	Change to last-visited active window (commonly used to flip-flop between two windows)
C-a <number>	Change to window by number (only for windows 0 to 9)
C-a ' <number or title>	Change to window by number or name
C-a n or C-a <space>	Change to next window in list
C-a p or C-a <backspace>	Change to previous window in list
C-a "	See window list (allows you to select a window to change to)
C-a w	Show window bar (if you don't have window bar)
C-a k	Kill current window (not recommended)
C-a \	Kill all windows (not recommended)
C-a A	Rename current window

Split screen

C-a S	Split display horizontally
C-a |	Split display vertically or C-a V (for the vanilla vertical screen patch)
C-a tab	Jump to next display region
C-a X	Remove current region
C-a Q	Remove all regions but the current one

Scripting

Send a command to a named session screen -S <name> -X <command>

Create a new window and run ping example.com screen -S <name> -X screen ping example.com

Stuff characters into the input buffer using bash to expand a newline character (from here) screen -S <name> [-p <page>] -X stuff $'quit\r'

A full example # run bash within screen screen -AmdS bash_shell bash # run top within that bash session screen -S bash_shell -p 0 -X stuff $'top\r' # ... some time later # stuff 'q' to tell top to quit screen -S bash_shell -X stuff 'q' # stuff 'exit\n' to exit bash session screen -S bash_shell -X stuff $'exit\r'

Misc

C-a C-l	Redraw window
C-a [	Enter copy mode or C-a <esc> (also used for viewing scrollback buffer)
C-a ]	Paste
C-a M	Monitor window for activity
C-a _	Monitor window for silence
C-a C-v	Enter digraph (for producing non-ascii characters)
C-a x	Lock (password protect) display
C-a :	Enter screen command
C-a H	Enable logging in the screen session

Notes