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Keyboard and shortcuts

Toolbar controls, hardware keyboard shortcuts, Option-as-Meta, custom shortcuts, and the D-pad.

updated 1 week ago13 min readpage 12 / 23

Moshi has three input layers: the terminal toolbar, custom shortcuts, and hardware keyboard support.

Terminal toolbar

The toolbar provides terminal actions that are tedious on a phone keyboard:

  • Enter and Backspace.
  • Paste.
  • Keyboard show/hide.
  • Shortcut panel.
  • Command or transcription history.
  • D-pad movement controls.

Open Settings -> Input to choose which toolbar items are visible and reorder them.

Custom shortcuts

Shortcuts can send common terminal sequences or text snippets. Use them for commands, tmux prefixes, editor chords, shell fragments, and agent prompts you reuse often.

The shortcut builder lets you choose keys and assign them to toolbar slots or categories.

tip

Keep shortcuts small. A command like git status or a tmux prefix is easier to trust from a phone than a long destructive shell pipeline.

D-pad controls

The D-pad gives you arrow keys, plus two configurable corner slots in the top-left and top-right. It is useful for shells, editors, REPLs, and agent UIs where arrow keys and cursor movement are frequent. The corner slots and every other touch gesture in the terminal are configured in Gestures.

Hardware keyboard shortcuts

When a hardware keyboard is connected, Moshi supports common app shortcuts:

CmdK
Show shortcuts.
Cmd1-9
Switch to a numbered session.
CmdO
Open the session switcher.
CmdN
New connection.
CmdW
Close the current session.
CmdV
Paste.

Option as Meta

Enable Option as Meta in keyboard settings if your terminal tools expect Meta/Alt key chords. This is mostly useful with hardware keyboards and terminal editors.

Auto-hide toolbar

The toolbar can hide automatically when a hardware keyboard is connected. Turn this off if you still want touch controls available while using an external keyboard.