Micro's configuration

To change keybindings, open ~/.config/micro/bindings.json file (or create such if it does not exist) and put your own commands like so:

{
    "Ctrl-j": "CursorLeft",
    "Ctrl-l": "CursorRight",
    "F6": "VSplit",
    "F7": "HSplit"
}

Then restart micro. Now you can move left/right with Ctrl-j and Ctrl-l.

F6 now splits screen vertically, while F7 - horizontally. To jump between splits, use default Ctrl-w hotkey.

Micro is pretty usable with its defaults, I personally have only 4 keybindings in my config (they’re shown above). It’s strange that micro hasn’t default hotkeys for splitting, so for me it’s essential to bind them.

How to check if you can bind a key

Micro is a terminal-based editor, so it recieves what a terminal emulator sends. Sadly, terminal emulators are broken as fuck, so before binding you should check what your terminal emulator sends to micro. It’s very easy: open micro’s command prompt with Ctrl-e and type raw, then press Enter. Then start typing your keybindings, and micro will echo what it gets:

Here, for example, Ctrl-h acts like backspace, while Ctrl-i is the Tab key.

If you see what you’ve typed, then it means that you can bind this key without any problems.