screen Cheatsheet - Terminal Session Manager Reference

Use screen -dmS name cmd. -d detaches immediately so the command never occupies your current terminal, and -mS creates a session called name and runs cmd inside it. The session ends on its own when the command finishes and your terminal is returned at once, which makes it a good fit for crontab entries, CI steps, or anything that must not block. Do keep the name — it shows up in screen -ls and is the only thing telling you which job a stale session belongs to. To watch progress, screen -r name to attach, then Ctrl+a d to detach again without disturbing the running job.

Put screen -t editor 1 vim in your ~/.screenrc: -t editor names the window, 1 makes it window one, and vim is the command executed in it. Screen builds the window during startup, so you land inside vim the moment you attach, with no manual window juggling. Baking in the name has a bonus — paired with caption always "%n %t" the status bar always shows the window number and title, so you never lose track of which window you are in when several are open.

Not directly — every command has to use the new prefix. escape ^Bb in the config file swaps Ctrl+a for Ctrl+b, and from that point the commands read Ctrl+b d, Ctrl+b c, Ctrl+b S. Screen keeps one escape hatch: pressing Ctrl+b twice still does what the old Ctrl+a Ctrl+a did, switching between the current and previous window. That double-press is a useful bridge while the new prefix still feels unfamiliar. While you are editing the file anyway, add term xterm-256color so the screen and host terminal agree on colour depth and a 256-colour session does not get downgraded.

Five steps. Press Ctrl+a [ to enter copy mode, where PageUp and PageDown scroll back through history. Once you are at the right place press Space to start a selection and adjust it with the arrow keys or a mouse drag. Press Enter to copy the selected run and finish selecting. Then Ctrl+a ] pastes the most recent copy at the cursor. If you still need to return to normal command mode, press Ctrl+a Esc. The practical value is that this reuses screen own scrollback buffer, so text that scrolled off the visible pane can still be recovered for as long as the buffer retains it.

Match the method to the intent. Ctrl+a n and Ctrl+a p step to the adjacent window, which suits casual sequential browsing. Ctrl+a 0-9 jumps straight to a number and is the fastest option while the window count is still small. Ctrl+a Ctrl+a toggles only between the two most recently used windows, which is all you need when you are watching two or three service logs at once — just press the prefix twice. Ctrl+a " opens an interactive picker listing every window, the way to go once you are past ten and the numbers no longer stick in your head. Ctrl+a w shows that same list without switching, handy for confirming where you are.