iTerm tab switching order

60
votes

A weird issue that comes up every once in a while when I have a lot of terminal tabs open and am switching between them via the keyboard is that the tabs get out of order. Normally iTerm will activate/focus the next tab to the right or the left, but sometimes I manage to screw this tab focus order up and it will jump over several before switching back to the next proper in the list of tabs.

So when I use the keyboard to switch between tabs using Command-left_arrow or Command-right_arrow and the tabs are out of order they may end up jumping back and forth down the line of tabs. I've yet to figure out how I get them out of this order in the first place.

Is there a way to fix this other than quitting iTerm and restarting? How do I do this in the first place?

2
tabsfocusiterm2
Just to add, I am having the same exact problem - but it occurs when I have as little as 1 terminal open, with only 4 tabs. It is very annoying. - StrugglingProgrammer
Not a direct answer to your question, but have you ever considered using tmux? I too had some struggle with iTerms tab and pane management and the shortcuts didnt feel natural and would often times distract me by placing my fingers too far away from the homerow. Ever since i use tmux I feel a lot more productive. I dont use the iTerm-tmux binding, just plain tmux inside a single iTerm window. It also doesnt chain you to OS X and in the long term the muscle memory comes in handy when required to work with different unix machines and/or ssh'ing to unix servers. - Kevin Dreßler
I switched to tmux for this reason. - StrugglingProgrammer

2 Answers

90
votes

In Preferences -> Keys -> Key Bindings you can map iTerm tab switching shortcuts to Next Tab / Previous Tab (or any other actions you prefer).

The default is Cycle Tabs Forward / Cycle Tabs Backward.

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1
votes

I had this weird bug when I was using the same combination as you do (Ctrl + Left / Right Arrow). I'm not quite sure about the expected behaviour of this shortcut, it seems to behave in a "graphic" way (won't select the next/previous tab, but rather the one in the arrow direction). Although I found out that the usual tab-switching command is Cmd + [ or Cmd + ] , this one seems to work just fine.