Midnight Commander Cheat Sheet

A Software › Nope cheat sheet in English by brechtm

Midnight Commander Keyboard Shortcuts

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PRs

General

Ctrl+l	Refresh display
Alt+.	Toggle hidden files display
Alt+,	Toggle horizontal/vertical split
Alt+`	Show screen selector
Alt+;/'	Switch to previous/next screen

Selected Items

Shift+F5	Copy to current directory
Shift+F6	Rename selected item
Ctrl+x, c	chmod dialog
Ctrl+x, o	chown dialog
Ctrl+x, v	Relative symlink dialog
Ctrl+x, s	Absolute symlink dialog
Ctrl+x, l	Hardlink dialog
Ctrl+x, Ctrl+d	File diff active/inactive panel selection
Ctrl+x, d	Directory diff active/inactive panel selection

Selected items are the tagged items or the highlighted item. Common actions mapped to F-keys are listed at the bottom of the screen.

Notes

- A capital in a shortcut indicates you need to hold Shift.
- The basic panel navigation shortcuts are not included.
- The shortcuts in bold are non-default (see mc.keymap panel).

Other Resources

Midnight Commander man page
Midnight Commander documentation
Linux Command Line Adventure: Midnight Commander

Active Panel

Alt+j/k/l	Move cursor to top/center/bottom of view
Insert / Ctrl+t Shift+/	Tag/untag focused item and move down/up
+/-	Tag/untag items by pattern
*	Invert tagging of items
Alt+s	Search/jump to by pattern
Alt+?	Open search dialog
Alt+t	Cycle panel view mode
Ctrl+x, i/q	Toggle other panel to info/quick view mode
Alt+c	Change directory popup
Alt+i	Change other panel to the same directory
Alt+o/L	Change other panel to the selected directory/link target (or the parent directory if a file is selected + select next item)
Alt+H	Directory history
Alt+y/u	CD to previous/next directory in the history
F12	Open directory hotlist
Ctrl+x, h	Add current directory to hotlist
Ctrl+space	Calculate selected item sizes (.. calculates all item sizes)
Ctrl+r	Refresh listing
Ctrl+u	Swap panels
Alt+P	Open Sort dialog
Alt+R	Reverse sort
Alt+N/E/S/M	Sort by Name/Ext/Size/ModTime (repeating shortcut reverses sort)
Ctrl+f	Filter (files only)
Alt+!	Filtered view
Shift+/	Scroll left/right

Command Line

Alt+h	Open command history
Alt+p/n	Select previous/next history entry
Shift+Tab	Complete item name
Ctrl+a/e	Jump to start/end of line
Ctrl+k	Clear to end of line
Alt+/	Jump to start of previous/next word
Alt+a/A	Paste active/inactive panel directory path
Alt+Enter	Paste active panel selected item name
Ctrl+x, t	Paste names of tagged files in active panel

Ctrl+a followed by Ctrl+k clears the full input line

Cmd line variables (active/inactive panel)

%d / %D	directory path
%s / %S	tagged or focused item name(s)
%f / %F	focused item name(s)
%b / %B	focused item base name(s)
%x / %X	focused item extension
%t / %T	tagged item name(s)
%%	literal % character

The current directory in the command line always matches the active panel's directory.

Custom mc.keymap entries

[filemanager]
HotList = f12
[panel]
BottomOnScreen = alt-l
MiddleOnScreen = alt-k
TopOnScreen = alt-j
PanelOtherCdLink = alt-shift-l
Sort = alt-shift-p
SortReverse = alt-shift-r
SortByName = alt-shift-n
SortByExt = alt-shift-e
SortBySize = alt-shift-s
SortByMTime = alt-shift-m
ScrollLeft = shift-left
ScrollRight = shift-right
Filter = ctrl-f
[dialog]
ScreenNext = alt-semicolon
ScreenPrev = alt-apostrophe
[input]
Complete = shift-tab

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