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Quick reference

GNU Screen Cheatsheet

A quick reference guide for GNU Screen: terminal multiplexer sessions, detach, reattach, window splitting, and keybindings.

· Published

GNU Screen is a terminal multiplexer that lets you manage multiple virtual terminal sessions within a single terminal window.

Session Management

# Start a new named session
screen -S mysession

# List all existing screen sessions
screen -ls

# Reattach to a running session
screen -r mysession

# Reattach and detach it from other terminals (-d -r)
screen -d -r mysession

Keybindings (Default Prefix: Ctrl+A)

All Screen commands begin by pressing Ctrl+A:

Shortcut Action
Ctrl+A then d Detach from session (leaves processes running in background)
Ctrl+A then c Create a new window
Ctrl+A then n Switch to next window
Ctrl+A then p Switch to previous window
Ctrl+A then " List all windows to select interactively
Ctrl+A then k Kill current window
Ctrl+A then [ Enter scrollback / copy mode (Esc to exit)

Screen Splitting

Shortcut Action
Ctrl+A then S Split display horizontally
Ctrl+A then | Split display vertically
Ctrl+A then Tab Move focus to next split region
Ctrl+A then X Close current split region

References

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