macosterminalgnu-screen

Unable to use Screen efficiently in Mac's Terminal


The post summarizes problems in using Screen in Mac's terminal when you have the following in your .zshrc

if [[ $STY = '' ]] then screen -xR; fi 
  1. Solution #1 is not working but Solution #2 works: Clipboard programs: pbcopy, pbpaste and xsel do not work at all
  2. Bug in Vim when used in Mac: Unable to have no scattered windows in Screen by .Xresources.
  3. Solved: Ctrl A stops working in terminal. This suggests me that Screen's keyboard bindings need to be changed slightly.
  4. Solved: The scrolling with touchpad does not work. By editing your .screenrc the scrollback works normally (including touchpad)
  5. Solved: Unable to have Dvorak keybindings for Screen for moving in Scrollback mod.
  6. How can you use pbcopy/pbpaste/xsel inside Screen?

Solution

  • I usually solve the ctrl-a problem by setting my escape character to ctrl-z (which you generally don't need to use as often when you're running screen, since instead of backgrounding a process, you can just start up a new screen). In my .screenrc:

    escape ^Zz
    

    Scrolling using the touchpad just isn't going to work; screen is acting as a terminal emulator inside a terminal emulator, and it's just not possible for screen to switch the scrollback buffer in Terminal.app whenever you switch between screens. You're going to have to use screen's scrollback features. See this article for some tips on using screen's scrollback features.