Block selection of text

[mnussbaum]

One feature I find highly useful in a terminal is the ability select a rectangular block of text. On the macOS terminal this can be done by holding opt while clicking and dragging the cursor over text. And for another example, the documentation for this feature in wezterm is here, where it describes the SelectTextAtMouseCursor("Block") action.

Block selection is particularly helpful in the context of a tool like tmux, where a user might want to select multiple lines of text in one pane, without pulling in text from a neighboring horizontal split.

From my initial read through of the Ghostty documentation, I haven't seen any mention of block or rectangular selection. Is it available? If not I think it would be a great feature to add!

[mitchellh]

Ghostty supports this. I’m not at a computer to double check the correct modifiers to press but it is supported.

[mnussbaum]

That's great to hear! And thanks for the lightning fast response 😄. Apologies if I've overlooked docs on how it can be triggered

I'm specifically curious about how to trigger the behavior on linux, fwiw.

[jcollie]

Hold down ctrl and alt and the cursor should change to a crosshair cursor. You can then select a rectangular region.

[mnussbaum]

Holding down ctrl and alt does indeed trigger a cross-hairs for me, but then when I click and drag no text is selected. Is there any info I can provide that would be helpful to check if this is a bug or not?

[mnussbaum]

After playing around a little, I found that when I enter full screen mode I can indeed block select using ctrl and alt, which is great! I wonder if part of the reason it isn't working for me outside of fullscreen mode is because alt is my desktop environment's mod key, which might be causing some weird interaction?

Let me know if there's any info I can provide to debug the non-fullscreen failure to select. I'd also be fine remapping the action to a different key combo, if that's possible.

Thanks for the pointers so far!

[jcollie]

Yes, if your DE is intercepting the alt key that would affect this feature. I'm on mobile right now but I don't recall a way to customize this in Ghostty. I'm not sure because I've never needed to change this.

[mnussbaum]

Makes sense. If you find there isn't an existing way to remap this key, do you think that would make sense as a feature request? Fwiw alt is a pretty common mod key since it's the default for the i3 and Sway DEs on Linux

[00-kat]

@mnussbaum Opened #3848.

[towolf]

Would it be possible to allow holding only ctrl for this?

I'm used to this from gnome-terminal and it's very much ingrained in my brain to use this modifier only.

And I'm left-handed and use my touch pad, and holding ctrl-alt on the left-and side doesn't work like that.

[reinierbutot]

is there a way to use visual selection mode like in vim? i can use the mouse to select text using ctrl+alt but i would like to keep my fingers on the keyboard and not have to reach for the mouse...

[00-kat]

#3488 #3708.