Keyboard

Herdr is mouse-native. You can click panes, tabs, workspaces, and agents, drag split borders, and use right-click menus without learning a single keybinding. Keyboard control is optional.

What the prefix is

A terminal multiplexer sits between your terminal and the programs running inside it. Those programs already use most key combinations: ctrl+c interrupts, ctrl+r searches history, editors claim nearly everything else. If Herdr grabbed common keys directly, it would break the programs inside it.

The prefix solves this. Press the prefix key, default ctrl+b, and the next keypress goes to Herdr instead of your terminal. prefix+c means: press ctrl+b, release, then press c. Herdr reserves one key instead of dozens.

Press prefix+? at any time to see every active binding. Press / in the keybind help to filter actions and shortcuts; use Backspace to edit the filter or ctrl+u to clear it.

Learn these five first

These cover most daily movement. Everything else can stay on the mouse.

The rest, by task

Panes:

Tabs:

Workspaces and session:

The full keymap and the binding syntax live in the keybinding reference.

Copy mode

Press prefix+[ to enter copy mode for the focused pane. Use h/j/k/l, tmux-style w/b/e and big-word W/B/E, {/}, PageUp/PageDown, ctrl+b/ctrl+f, and ctrl+u/ctrl+d to move. Press / or ? for forward or backward literal search, then n or N to repeat in the same or opposite direction. Search is case-insensitive unless the query contains an uppercase letter. Use v or Space to start a selection, y or Enter to copy it, and q or Esc to leave without copying. Esc clears an active selection or search before exiting. Copy mode does not pause the pane process: output remains live, follows at the bottom, and stays pinned when you navigate into history. The configured prefix keeps its normal meaning in copy mode; with the default prefix, ctrl+b enters prefix mode instead of paging up, so use a different prefix if you want ctrl+b for copy-mode page-up. Mouse drag-select copies without entering copy mode at all.

Change anything

Every binding is configurable, including the prefix itself:

[keys]prefix = "ctrl+a"

Going prefix-free

You can bind Herdr actions to direct chords that need no prefix at all. The hard part is knowing which chords are safe, because terminals, shells, and desktop environments already own most of the keyboard.

Any chord works as a binding: ctrl+j, alt+k, whatever fits your hands. But a chord has to survive three layers before Herdr sees it: your operating system, your outer terminal (Ghostty, iTerm2, and others ship their own defaults), and the programs running inside the pane. ctrl+j reaches Herdr fine, but shells and editors treat it as enter. alt+k is free on Linux, but macOS composes it into a special character in most terminals. If you pick chords from these families, double-check them against your own terminal and OS shortcuts.

We mapped the default keybindings of Ghostty, iTerm2, Terminal.app, kitty, WezTerm, Alacritty, Warp, Windows Terminal, GNOME Terminal, and Konsole, plus the global shortcuts of GNOME and KDE. One modifier family is almost untouched everywhere: ctrl+alt. Terminals leave it free, it is not affected by the macOS option-key composing behavior that blocks plain alt chords, and it transmits even in terminals without a modern keyboard protocol. It is a safe default, but the choice is yours.

This setup keeps the prefix bindings working and adds direct chords on top:

[keys]focus_pane_left = ["prefix+h", "ctrl+alt+h"]focus_pane_down = ["prefix+j", "ctrl+alt+j"]focus_pane_up = ["prefix+k", "ctrl+alt+k"]focus_pane_right = ["prefix+l", "ctrl+alt+l"]previous_tab = ["prefix+p", "ctrl+alt+["]next_tab = ["prefix+n", "ctrl+alt+]"]new_tab = ["prefix+c", "ctrl+alt+c"]split_vertical = ["prefix+v", "ctrl+alt+d"]split_horizontal = ["prefix+minus", "ctrl+alt+shift+d"]zoom = ["prefix+z", "ctrl+alt+z"]

A few ctrl+alt chords are taken elsewhere. Avoid these:

If a direct chord does nothing, your terminal or desktop environment consumed it before Herdr could see it. Rebind either side: free the chord in the terminal’s settings, or pick another chord in Herdr.

Last updated Oct 08, 2026