Extra Keys

Understanding Keys on Termux and Shortcuts¶

You might have noticed that the keyboard at the bottom of the screen has some pretty useful keys by default! These are ESC, TAB, CTRL, ALT, -, DOWN and UP.

But you can always edit these if you want to!

Use of keys like ALT, CTRL, ESC is necessary for working with a CLI terminal. Termux touch keyboards do not include one. For that purpose Termux uses the Volume down button to emulate the CTRL key. For example, pressing VOLUME DOWN+L on a touch keyboard sends the same input as pressing Ctrl+L on a hardware keyboard.

The result of using CTRL in combination with a key depends on which program is used, but for many command line tools the following shortcuts works:

• CTRL+A → Move cursor to the beginning of line
• CTRL+C → Abort (send SIGINT to) current process
• CTRL+D → Logout of a terminal session
• CTRL+E → Move cursor to the end of line
• CTRL+K → Delete from cursor to the end of line
• CTRL+L → Clear the terminal
• CTRL+Z → Suspend (send SIGTSTP to) current process
• CTRL+ALT+C → Open new session (only work in Hacker's Keyboard)

The Volume up key also serves as a special key to produce certain input:

• VOLUME UP+E → Escape key
• VOLUME UP+T → Tab key
• VOLUME UP+1 → F1 (and Volume Up+2 → F2, etc)
• VOLUME UP+0 → F10
• VOLUME UP+B → Alt+B, back a word when using readline
• VOLUME UP+F → Alt+F, forward a word when using readline
• VOLUME UP+X → Alt+X
• VOLUME UP+W → Up arrow key
• VOLUME UP+A → Left arrow key
• VOLUME UP+S → Down arrow key
• VOLUME UP+D → Right arrow key
• VOLUME UP+L → | (the pipe character)
• VOLUME UP+H → ~ (the tilde character)
• VOLUME UP+U → _ (underscore)
• VOLUME UP+P → Page Up
• VOLUME UP+N → Page Down
• VOLUME UP+. → Ctrl+ (SIGQUIT)
• VOLUME UP+V → Show the volume control
• VOLUME UP+Q → Show extra keys view
• VOLUME UP+K → Another variant to toggle extra keys view

Adding extra keys¶

Termux also has an extra keys view which allows you to extend your current keyboard. To enable the extra keys view you have to long tap on the keyboard button in the left drawer menu. (Swipe from left → right to open the drawer)

You can also press VOLUME UP+Q or VOLUME UP+K.

Open the termux.properties file:

$ nano ~/.termux/termux.properties

mkdir $HOME/.termux/

Now we will start by adding two rows of some really useful keys(default keys until v0.66)

extra-keys = [['ESC','/','-','HOME','UP','END','PGUP'],['TAB','CTRL','ALT','LEFT','DOWN','RIGHT','PGDN']]

The extra-keys definition itself can also be spread over multiple lines, if desired, by "backslash-escaping" the line feed at the end of each line, thus:

extra-keys = [ \
    ['ESC','/','-','HOME','UP','END','PGUP'], \
    ['TAB','CTRL','ALT','LEFT','DOWN','RIGHT','PGDN'] \
]

Each key "entry" can be either a string (such as '|', '/' or '=') or one of the values listed below. These values are defined in ExtraKeysView.java, and the list of values (not including possible synonyms) is:

• CTRL ("special key")
• ALT ("special key")
• FN ("special key")
• ESC ("special key")
• TAB
• HOME
• END
• PGUP
• PGDN
• INS
• DEL
• BKSP
• UP
• LEFT
• RIGHT
• DOWN
• ENTER
• BACKSLASH
• QUOTE
• APOSTROPHE

Saving the properties¶

Now you must save the file. To do so, you need to:

• Hit CTRL+X(or VOLUME DOWN+X which is the same thing.)
• Press y on the keyboard to save changes
• Press ENTER to save the filename!

Enabling the changes¶

Termux won't directly load the save changes. You can use any of the following ways to enable these changes:

• Restart the application! (Easiest way)
• Run source ~/.termux/termux.properties to load the file (The linux way)
• Run termux-reload-settings (the offical way)

All 3 of these work the same. If one doesn't for you, then use the other

mkdir $HOME/.termux/ ;echo "extra-keys = [['ESC','/','-','HOME','UP','END','PGUP'],['TAB','CTRL','ALT','LEFT','DOWN','RIGHT','PGDN']]" >> $HOME/.termux/termux.properties; termux-reload-properties;