Selecting a Window

This section describes the commands for switching between windows in an screen session. The windows are numbered from 0 to 9, and are created in that order by default (see section New Window).

• Next and Previous: Forward or back one window.
• Other Window: Switch back and forth between two windows.
• Select: Switch to a window (and to one after kill).
• Windowlist: Present a list of all windows for selection.

Moving Back and Forth

Command: next

(C-a SPC, C-a n, C-a C-n)
Switch to the next window. This command can be used repeatedly to cycle through the list of windows. (On some terminals, C-SPC generates a NUL character, so you must release the control key before pressing space.)

Command: prev

(C-a p, C-a C-p)
Switch to the previous window (the opposite of C-a n).

Other Window

Command: other

(C-a C-a)
Switch to the last window displayed. Note that this command defaults to the command character typed twice, unless overridden. For instance, if you use the option `-e]x', this command becomes ]] (see section Command Character).

Select

Command: select [n]

(C-a n, C-a ')
Switch to the window with the number n. If no window number is specified, you get prompted for an identifier. This can be a window name (title) or a number. When a new window is established, the lowest available number is assigned to this window. Thus, the first window can be activated by select 0; there can be no more than 10 windows present simultaneously (unless screen is compiled with a higher MAXWIN setting). There are two special arguments, select - switches to the internal blank window and select . switches to the current window. The latter is useful if used with screen's -X option.

Windowlist

Command: windowlist [-b] [-m]

Command: windowlist string [string]

Command: windowlist title [title]

(C-a ")
Display all windows in a table for visual window selection. The desired window can be selected via the standard movement keys (see section Movement Keys) and activated via the return key. If the -b option is given, screen will switch to the blank window before presenting the list, so that the current window is also selectable. The -m option changes the order of the windows, instead of sorting by window numbers screen uses its internal most-recently-used list.

The table format can be changed with the string and title option, the title is displayed as table heading, while the lines are made by using the string setting. The default setting is `Num Name%=Flags' for the title and `%3n %t%=%f' for the lines. See the string escapes chapter (see section String Escapes) for more codes (e.g. color settings).

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