Micro editor: intro

Micro text editor is a cross-platform terminal-based editor. It uses generic keybindings (like Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v, Ctrl-z ) and has really nice mouse support (for terminal based editor).

Links

• Github repo
• Website

Installation

Windows

You can download a prebuild binary file here. You are interested in an archive with the name like “micro-2.0.11-win64.zip”. Download the archive, then unpack somewhere (it may be “Program Files” directory, or any other).

Then, you need to add this directory to the PATH environment variable. It will allow to run micro from inside of any directory. Otherwise, you’ll have to run micro only from the directory where the micro.exe is located.

Linux

I have not tested it on Linux, but documentation says that micro can be installed via package managers:

• dnf install micro (Fedora).
• apt install micro (Ubuntu and Debian).
• pacman -S micro (Arch Linux). Checked, works fine
• emerge app-editors/micro (Gentoo).
• zypper install micro-editor (SUSE).
• eopkg install micro (Solus).
• pacstall -I micro (Pacstall).

Mac

It should work on Macs, but, as with Linux, I’ve not tested it. Here is the link to docs.

How to run

Open a terminal app and type micro. On Windows, beside running micro from the terminal, you can just double-click on the micro.exe file.

Basic keybindings

What makes micro cool is its default settings - most basic hotkeys works as you would expect:

• Ctrl - o : OpenFile
• Ctrl - s : Save
• Ctrl-c : copy
• Ctrl-x : cut
• Ctrl-v : paste
• Ctrl-z : undo
• Ctrl-ArrowLeft - move one word backward
• Ctrl-ArrowRight - move one word forward
• Tab- indent selection
• Shift - Tab- unindent selection
• Page Down - one page down
• Page Up - one page up

Mouse commands

Micro has great mouse support - you can move cursor, select text and interact with other UI elements with a mouse.

• Mouse double-click - select a word
• Mouse triple-click - select the whole line HOT!!!
• Ctrl - Mouse click - set multicursor

Plugins

There are not so many plugins, but they’re exist. You can find plugins at Micro plugins directory. Then, click on a plugin and copy the command for plugin installation, for example:

$ micro -plugin install filemanager