This cheat sheet covers the essential commands for editing files in Nano, a simple and beginner-friendly terminal text editor.

Navigation & Search

Ctrl + W: Where Is (Find). This opens a search prompt to help you find specific text in your document.

Ctrl + A: Go to the Beginning of the current line.

Ctrl + E: Go to the End of the current line.

Ctrl + / (then enter the line number and press [Enter]): Jumps to a specific line.

Ctrl + / (then enter 9999 and press [Enter]): Jumps to end of document.

Editing & Clipboard

Ctrl + K: Cut. This “kills” or cuts the entire line your cursor is on. It can also be used to cut a selected block of text.

Ctrl + U: Uncut (Paste). This pastes the text that was last cut using Ctrl+K.

Ctrl + 6: Mark Text. Press this to set a “mark” at your cursor’s current position. You can then move the cursor to highlight a block of text. Once highlighted, you can use Ctrl+K to cut the selection.

File Management

nano /path/to/file: Open a file for editing. If the file doesn’t exist, this command will create it.

Ctrl + O: Write Out (Save). This saves your current changes to the file. You’ll be asked to confirm the filename.

Ctrl + X: Exit. If you have unsaved changes, you will be prompted to save them first.