Screen Quick Dev Reference

This is a quick reference guide cheat sheet for the screen command.

Getting Started

Getting started

$ screen 

1. Press Ctrl-A D to detach session

2. List all screen sessions

$ screen -ls

3. Re-attach a screen Session

$ screen -r <name/pid>

Options

-S — screen -S debug — Start a new session with session name

-ls — screen -ls — List running sessions / screens

-x — screen -x — Attach to a running session

-r — screen -r debug — Attach to a running session with name

-R — screen -R debug — Attach to a session (Will create if it doesn't exist)

-d — screen -d -m wget xxxx.com/large.file — Start screen in detached mode

-X — screen -X -S debug kill — Kill a running session

Help

Ctrl-A ? — See help (Lists keybindings)

Window Management

Ctrl-A C — Create new window

Ctrl-A Ctrl-A — Change to last-visited active window

Ctrl-A 0...9 — Change to window by number

Ctrl-A ' <0...9 or title> — Change to window by number or name

Ctrl-A N or Ctrl-A <space> — Change to next window in list

Ctrl-A P or Ctrl-A <backspace> — Change to previous window in list

Ctrl-A " — See window list

Ctrl-A W — Show window bar

Ctrl-A K — Kill current window (not recommended)

Ctrl-A \ — Kill all windows (not recommended)

Ctrl-A A — Rename current window

Getting Out

Ctrl-A D — Detach

Ctrl-A D D — Detach and logout (quick exit)

Ctrl-A : — Exit all session

Ctrl-A C-\ — Force-exit screen (not recommended)

Split screen

Ctrl-A S — Split display horizontally

Ctrl-A V — Split display vertically

Ctrl-A | — Split display vertically

Ctrl-A TAB — Jump to next display region

Ctrl-A X — Remove current region

Ctrl-A Q — Remove all regions but the current one

Misc

Ctrl-A C-l — Redraw window

Ctrl-A [ — Copy mode

Ctrl-A ESC — Copy mode

Ctrl-A ] — Paste

Ctrl-A M — Monitor window for activity

Ctrl-A _ — Monitor window for silence

Ctrl-A Ctrl-V — Enter digraph (non-ASCII characters)

Ctrl-A X — Lock (password protect) display

Ctrl-A : — Enter screen command

Ctrl-A H — Enable logging in the screen session

Screen tricks

SSH and attach in one line

$ ssh -t user@host screen -x <name/pid>