| start a new screen session with session name | screen -S <name> |
| list running sessions/screens | screen -ls |
| attach to a running session | screen -x |
| attach to session name | screen -r <name> |
| the “ultimate attach” | screen -dRR (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.) |
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 working with screen within screen. For example C-a a n will move screen to a new window on the screen within screen.
| create new window | C-a c |
| change to last-visited active window | C-a C-a (commonly used to flip-flop between two windows) |
| change to window by number | C-a <number> (only for windows 0 to 9) |
| change to window by number or name | C-a ' <number or title> |
| change to next window in list | C-a n or C-a <space> |
| change to previous window in list | C-a p or C-a <backspace> |
| see window list | C-a " (allows you to select a window to change to) |
| show window bar | C-a w (if you don't have window bar) |
| close current window | Close all applications in the current window (including shell) |
| kill current window | C-a k (not recommended) |
| kill all windows | C-a \ (not recommended) |
| rename current window | C-a A |
To any session name,
| 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'
In copy mode, one can navigate the scrollback buffer in various ways:
| half page up | C-u | half page down | C-d | |
| back | C-b | forward | C-f | |
| cursor left/down/up/right | h/j/k/l |