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11

Are there any keyboard shortcuts to switch between tabs in terminal?

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up vote 52 down vote accepted

Select Next Tab: ⌘+} (selects the tab to the right of your current tab)

Select Previous Tab: ⌘+{ (select the tab to the left of your current tab)

These are the shortcuts listed under the Window menu, but I think it would make more sense to say ⌘+⇧+], since that's actually what you type.

Since there are menu items that these shortcuts trigger, you can use System Preferences-> Keyboard-> Keyboard Shortcuts-> Application Shortcuts (or App Shortcuts on newer OSX versions) to reassign the shortcuts to whatever you want. For Terminal, choose Other..., then, under Applications, go to Utilities -> Terminal.app:

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  • 1
    On a German keyboard the combos are: CMD+Ä and CMD+Ö (yes, with the 'Umlaute') :) – gentmatt Jan 20 '12 at 19:26
  • I'm curious, are those located just above and to the left of the right shift key? – Nathan Greenstein Jan 20 '12 at 19:27
  • Diagonal to the top left. So I guess it's the same location! – gentmatt Jan 20 '12 at 19:27
  • Defaults seem so foreign (but I'm not a heavy mac user...), Chrome and my text editor use Meta + Alt + Arrows to flip through tabs, but Terminal.app is a special snowflake I guess. – Nick T Jun 30 '13 at 6:29
  • 2
    As of OS X El Capitan, the Menu Title is now Show Next Tab. – bassplayer7 Jan 11 '16 at 14:57
up vote 24 down vote

⌘ + ⇧ + arrow keys is also a valid option.

Enjoy!

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  • 4
    Not sure why this was voted down. Works for me. – Alistair McMillan Oct 7 '14 at 21:26
  • no source, no reference, bit short on explaining ect.. – Buscar웃 Oct 7 '14 at 23:36
  • Doesn't work for me on Mavericks. – MikeB Nov 4 '14 at 22:03
  • 1
    Works great for me on Yosemite. This is a far better answer for people with non-english keyboards where the braces are hard to type. – Klas Mellbourn Dec 21 '14 at 19:16
  • Works for me on Yosemite as well. You can use Command + arrows to switch terminal windows and add shift to switch tabs inside the window. – Milan Babuškov Jan 9 '15 at 9:33
up vote 1 down vote

If you want to choose your own shortcut for switching tabs in terminal:

open /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Keyboard.prefPane/

Application Shortcuts > (Add) > Application (Other...) > Applications/Utilities/Terminal

Menu titles:

Select Next Tab
Select Previous Tab

I've chosen, for example, ⌘+ALT+⇦ and ⌘+ALT+⇨.

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  • Is Select Next Tab a reserved command on Mac? I mean, I don't get how the OS will understand this. – Igor Ganapolsky Apr 8 '16 at 14:45
  • Yea, this is what I would like to set my Terminal shortcut to be too since every other application with tabs uses this. But it doesn't work when I add it in shortcuts.... How does mac know what command to do? – jaredwilli May 18 '16 at 12:22
  • If a new OS X version has changed the Terminal app menu item titles, then change it accordingly. – Jose Alban May 18 '16 at 12:59

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