zsh-editor-selection

A Zsh plugin that brings familiar text-editor selection behaviour to the Zsh Line Editor.

• 🔡 Select by character, word, or visual line using Shift-modified keys
• 📋 Copy, cut, and paste via the system clipboard
• ✏️ Type to replace an active selection
• ➡️ Plain cursor movement deselects automatically
• 🖥️ Supports WSL, macOS, and native Linux

Key Bindings

Key	Action
Shift+Right	Select character forward
Shift+Left	Select character backward
Shift+Down	Select visual line down
Shift+Up	Select visual line up
Ctrl+Shift+Right	Select word forward
Ctrl+Shift+Left	Select word backward
Ctrl+Shift+Down	Select to buffer end
Ctrl+Shift+Up	Select to buffer start
Ctrl+Down	Jump to buffer end
Ctrl+Up	Jump to buffer start
Ctrl+Y	Copy selection to clipboard
Ctrl+X	Cut selection to clipboard
Ctrl+V	Paste (replaces selection if active)
Delete	Delete selection or next character
Backspace	Delete selection or previous character
Escape	Deselect

Requirements

Platform	Clipboard tool	Status
WSL	clip.exe (built-in)	✅ Tested
macOS	pbcopy (built-in)	⚠️ Untested
Linux/X11	xclip	⚠️ Untested

macOS should be tested soon, please feel free to test it on any Linux platforms and report your findings!

Installation

Oh My Zsh

git clone https://github.com/Ganthark/zsh-editor-selection \
  ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-editor-selection

Then add the plugin to your ~/.zshrc:

plugins=(... zsh-editor-selection)

Sheldon

[plugins.zsh-editor-selection]
github = "Ganthark/zsh-editor-selection"

Manual

git clone https://github.com/Ganthark/zsh-editor-selection
echo "source ~/path/to/zsh-editor-selection/zsh-editor-selection.plugin.zsh" >> ~/.zshrc

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Changing key bindings

Escape codes for modifier+arrow keys vary by terminal. The defaults in this plugin target Windows Terminal, iTerm2, and most modern VTE-based terminals. If a binding doesn't work, find your terminal's code like so:

1. Run cat and press Enter
2. Press Ctrl+V then your key combo
3. Note the printed escape sequence
4. Override the binding in your ~/.zshrc after sourcing the plugin:

bindkey 'YOUR_SEQUENCE' select-forward-char   # example

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Known Limitations

Visual line wrap highlight rendering — when a selection spans a line that wraps at the terminal column boundary, ZLE's region highlight may not colour the wrapped portion correctly. The selection is functionally correct (deleting it removes the right characters). I am unsure I can solve this issue so feel free to send your suggestions!

Ctrl+C/Ctrl+Shift+C — on most terminals these keystrokes are intercepted by the terminal before reaching ZLE. Ctrl+Y is provided as the copy keybind instead. If your terminal does pass Ctrl+C/Ctrl+Shift+C through you can change the binding to your liking following the method described in the Changing key bindings section.

Closing remarks

This is my first zsh plugin and I hope I respected the usual conventions but feel free to contact me if anything is wrong or if you have any remarks/suggestions.

Acknowledgements

A lot of refactor, comments and general help prototyping and debugging was done using Claude Sonnet 4.6 By Anthropic.

Demo GIF made using asciinema/asciinema gif generator