How to use Ctrl-Tab in GNU Screen

GNU Screen allows you to open several sub-windows within one terminal window. By default, you switch between them using Ctrl-A followed by n or p. I think this is a bit clumsy, I would like to switch with Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab just like you switch tabs in Firefox and many other applications. The sub-windows in Screen is conceptually just like tabs in Firefox, so it’s logical to use the same keys to switch between them.

Screen can be configured to use any key combination for switching sub-window by using the bindkey command. However, Screen can only recognize the key combinations that your terminal emulator actually intercept and send a unique code for. By default, most terminal emulators do not intercept Ctrl-Tab, they just send the same code as for Tab. And you certainly not want to use that since Tab is used for tab completion in the shell.

So you need to configure your terminal emulator to intercept and send a unique code for Ctrl-Tab. In xterm, you can do that by setting the X resource XTerm.vt100.modifyOtherKeys: 2. Now xterm sends ^[[27;5;9~ for Ctrl-Tab and ^[[27;6;9~ for Ctrl-Shift-Tab (^[ is ESC). However, you don’t want to use this since it mess up other things. You need to configure just Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab without altering any other keys. This can be done using the translation feature. Add this to your ~/.Xresources file (you need to log out for this to take effect):

*vt100.translations: #override \n\
        Ctrl ~Shift <Key>Tab: string(0x1b) string("[27;5;9~") \n \
        Ctrl Shift <Key>Tab: string(0x1b) string("[27;6;9~") \n

Then add this to your ~/.screenrc file:

# Ctrl-Tab
bindkey "^[[27;5;9~" next

# Ctrl-Shift-Tab
bindkey "^[[27;6;9~" prev

This works in xterm. I’m not sure if it works in other terminal emulators.