How can I make ctrl+left/right keys work right in tmux?

Question

In both zsh and bash, ctrl+arrows allows me to move the position I'm typing at by whole word, but this does not work in tmux, which is a problem as I'm currently launching it automatically every time I open a shell.

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

1. Edit your ~/.tmux.conf and add lines:
   set-window-option -g xterm-keys on

2. If you don’t want to make it permanent just yet, do:
   C-b :set-window-option xterm-keys on

3. Reload your config in tmux by doing:
   C-b :source-file ~/.tmux.conf

More information here:

Answer 2

I'm not sure, but this might be because tmux by default binds C-<up/down/left/right> to shift the focus onto the pane above/below/left of/right of the currently focused pane. If you don't use panes often, you might not have noticed this feature. If this is what the problem is, you can unbind those keys by saying:

unbind C-Left
unbind C-Right

That might be enough on it's own, or you might need to manually bind them again to what you want them to do, via:

bind -n C-Left <the action you want>
bind -n C-Right <other action you want>