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Browser-style tab cycling: make Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab bindable (and the default) #249
Description
What are you trying to do?
Cycle between tabs (surfaces) with browser muscle memory: Ctrl+Tab forward, Ctrl+Shift+Tab back.
What would you like wmux to do?
Bind nextSurface / prevSurface to Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab by default, or at minimum make Ctrl+Tab bindable.
Today it can't be, even by hand. useKeyboardShortcuts.ts bails on !isSafeToIntercept(e), and Tab is not in SAFE_CTRL_KEYS ('b', 'd', 'n', 't', 'w', 'f', ','). The terminal side shares the same predicate, so a Ctrl+Tab binding is dead in both places: over a terminal it falls through to xterm, whose Tab case cancels and bubbles (only Shift+Tab carries meaning for TUIs). Ctrl+Shift+Tab is claimable, so a hand-rolled pair is asymmetric today: back works, forward does not. I currently use Ctrl+Shift+] / Ctrl+Shift+[.
Worth weighing the counterargument: the bare-Ctrl whitelist is deliberate, because Ctrl+A/E/R/U/K must reach the shell. Ctrl+Tab is not one of those; xterm does not consume it, and TUIs use Shift+Tab, not Ctrl+Tab. Whether it is right to widen the whitelist is your call; making it bindable (even non-default, via the existing recorder) would already fix the asymmetry.
Unrelated but adjacent: Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown are workspaces, not tabs, so there is no browser-style key cycling tabs at all today.
What do you do today instead?
Ctrl+Shift+] / Ctrl+Shift+[. Ctrl+1..9 selects workspaces; tabs are Ctrl+Alt+1..9, or the index families can be swapped in Settings.
Activity
feat(shortcuts): Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab cycle tabs by default (#249)
amirlehmam commentedon Sep 29, 2026
Shipped in v2.14.0: Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab are the defaults for next/previous tab and are claimed over a focused terminal too, through the same single predicate. If you still had the old Ctrl+Shift+] / [ defaults they're moved over once; a custom binding is never touched. Plain Tab / Shift+Tab are never claimed, even if bound.