Looking for ALT+LeftArrowKey solution in zsh

I just recently switched from bash to zsh, however I miss my Alt+LeftArrowKey and Alt+RightArrowKey to go back and forth a word at a time.

Right now, if I press Alt+LeftArrowKey I go back a couple of letters and then I'm stuck. I won't go any further backwards and it won't back to the end of the line with Alt+RightArrowKey as I would expect. I can't even use the arrow keys to go to the end of the line, only to the second to last. Can't input new chars on the line either or indeed delete.

How do I get my beloved shortcut back?

I'm on Mac OS X using Terminal if that's important.

Run cat then press keys to see the codes your shortcut send.
(Press Ctrl+C to kill the cat when you're done.)
For me, (ubuntu, konsole, xterm) pressing Alt+← sends ^[[1;3D, so i would put in my .zshrc

bindkey "^[[1;3C" forward-word
bindkey "^[[1;3D" backward-word

(Actually I prefer to use Ctrl + arrow to move word by word, like in a normal textbox under windows or linux gui.)

Related question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8638012

For anyone using iTerm, regardless of shell

All of the solutions offered here take a backwards approach in my opinion. You're essentially telling your shell to listen for some esc sequence or other key binding you have set in your terminal, creating compatibility issues when you switch shells (If you SSH into some other shell, switch from BASH to ZSH, etc and you lose some if not all of your keybindings).

Most shells have a set of default sequences that come pre-bound. Furthermore, while they aren't 100% consistent, they're close enough. So the easiest way that I have found to create keybinding for a particular action in the shell is to tell your terminal application to bind to the default keybindings that are consistent across shells.

I wrote a compressive solution for getting your terminal to respond as close to native mac keybindings here

Open the iTerm preferences ⌘+, and navigate to the Profiles tab (the Keys tab can be used, but adding keybinding to your profile allows you to save your profile and sync it to multiple computers) and keys sub-tab and enter the following:

Move cursor one word left

>⌥+← Send Hex Codes: 0x1b 0x62

Move cursor one word right

>⌥+→ Send Hex Codes: 0x1b 0x66

And that should give you the desired behavior not just in ZSH, but also if you SSH into a server running BASH, irb/pry, node etc.

Adding the following to ~/.zshrc worked for me on OSX Mountain Lion.

bindkey -e
bindkey '[C' forward-word
bindkey '[D' backward-word

On MacOS High Siera 10.13.6 or Mojave 10.14.2 and using iTerm2 with ZSH To move from words I have to put like this:

bindkey "\e\e[D" backward-word
bindkey "\e\e[C" forward-word

Another solutions doesn't work fo rme

Though not strictly answering your question, the default binding for forward-word and backward-word are alt-f resp. alt-b.

This works everywhere, does not require you to leave the home row, and has a nice mnemonic property (f=forward, b=back), while also being consistent with ctrl-f and ctrl-b being forward-character and backward-character.

Rip out your arrow keys!

For iTerm go to where this screenshot shows and select "Natural Text Editing"

if you already had some key mappings it will ask below, select accordingly not to lose any special bindings you set before. however, if you don't remember adding any bindings or just started using iTerm (on this machine), you will be safe to choose "Remove"

To make it work for me I used this answer, however I had to swap the codes (left <-> right)

⌥+← Send Hex Codes: 0x1b 0x66
⌥+→ Send Hex Codes: 0x1b 0x62

and add the following to my ~/.zshrc

bindkey -e
bindkey "^[b" backward-word
bindkey '^[f' forward-word

On Mavericks (10.9.4) the code is 1;5... so for binding alt with arrows I have my .zshrc using this:

bindkey "^[[1;5C" forward-word
bindkey "^[[1;5D" backward-word

You can use CTRL+V and then the command you want to use

in Yosemite use Rob's solution

In zsh, you can use the bindkey command to see keyboard shortcuts.

Use bindkey to explore options that are available without custom keybindings.

Namely ^[b to move backward a word and ^[f to move forward a word.

On MacOS Monterey, use the following in ~/.zshrc to make SHIFT + Arrows jump words:

bindkey "^[[1;2C" forward-word
bindkey "^[[1;2D" backward-word

And this for Option + Arrows:

bindkey "^[^[[C" forward-word
bindkey "^[^[[D" backward-word

If you're using iTerm in CSI u mode, the bindings for your .zshrc end up being:

bindkey '^[[1;3D' backward-word
bindkey '^[[1;3C' forward-word

If you want iTerminal to respect Emacs style shortcuts like ^Mf and ^Mb for forward/back a word I found best way to use this tip:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/196357/making-iterm-to-translate-meta-key-in-the-same-way-as-in-other-oses

These keybindings work with Alacritty on Arch Linux, just add them to the ~/.zshrc file

bindkey -e

bindkey "^[[3~" delete-char                     # Key Del
bindkey "^[[5~" beginning-of-buffer-or-history  # Key Page Up
bindkey "^[[6~" end-of-buffer-or-history        # Key Page Down
bindkey "^[[H" beginning-of-line                # Key Home
bindkey "^[[F" end-of-line                      # Key End
bindkey "^[[1;3C" forward-word                  # Key Alt + Right
bindkey "^[[1;3D" backward-word                 # Key Alt + Left