Keymap cheatsheet
Every key the cockpit handles, in one place. The in-app ?
overlay is the canonical source — this page mirrors it for
offline reference.
Global (works everywhere)
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
Tab | Next screen |
Shift+Tab | Previous screen |
1 – 9 | Jump to S1 – S9 |
0 | Jump to S10 (Pins) |
Alt+1 – Alt+5 | Jump to S11 – S15 (Manifest, Watchlist, FeedTimeline, Pubsub, Fleet) |
Ctrl+N | Open node picker (also :nodes) |
Ctrl+Alt+N | Open notification history overlay (v1.14+) — see :notifications |
Shift+E | Open the batch-economics modal (v1.12+) — guided form for topup/dilute/extend/buy/plan previews |
Shift+L | Toggle fullscreen log pane (v1.13+) — collapses the active screen so the log pane fills the middle of the cockpit. Press again to return. |
/ | Open the log-pane filter prompt (v1.13+) — case-insensitive substring; Enter commits, Esc cancels. With an active filter, Esc (no prompt open) clears it. |
[ / ] | Previous / next tab on the bottom log pane (Errors / Warn / Info / Debug / Bee HTTP / bee::http / Cockpit). Persisted across launches. |
+ / - | Grow / shrink the bottom log pane height by one line. Clamped to 4..24. Persisted across launches. |
Shift+↑ / Shift+↓ | Scroll the active log tab back / forward by one line. Pauses auto-tail; the title shows a paused N ↑ indicator. |
Shift+PgUp / Shift+PgDn | Same, ten lines at a time. |
Shift+End | Resume auto-tail (snap back to the latest entries). |
? | Toggle help overlay |
: | Open command bar |
qq | Quit — double-tap within ~1.5 s. First q shows a footer hint; second q confirms. :q also works for an unguarded quit. |
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+D | Quit immediately. Escape hatch if the cockpit ever stops responding to qq. |
Esc | Close help / drill / command bar / cancel current input. Also cancels a pending q (so you can back out without committing). |
Screen-specific keys
S5 is read-only with no screen-specific keys. S1 / S7 / S8 are read-only but their content can overflow a short terminal, so they take the free-scroll keys below (v1.16+).
Free-scroll keys (S1, S3, S4, S7, S8)
Screens whose body can outgrow the viewport but have no selection cursor scroll directly:
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Scroll one line |
PgUp / PgDn | Scroll ten lines |
Home / End | Jump to top / bottom |
A right-edge scrollbar appears whenever the content overflows.
On S3 Swap, which stacks two scrollable tables, ←/→
(or h/l) pick which table the scroll keys drive — the
focused table's title is accent-coloured.
S1 — Health gates
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k / PgUp / PgDn / Home / End | Free-scroll the gates list |
S2 — Stamps + bucket drill
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Move row selection |
↵ | Drill into selected batch (bucket histogram + worst-N) |
Esc | Close drill |
S3 — Swap / cheques
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
←→ / h l | Focus the cheques ↔ settlements table |
↑↓ / j k / PgUp / PgDn / Home / End | Free-scroll the focused table |
S4 — Lottery + rchash
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
r | Fire / re-fire rchash benchmark |
↑↓ / j k / PgUp / PgDn / Home / End | Free-scroll the stake card |
S7 — Network / NAT
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k / PgUp / PgDn / Home / End | Free-scroll the public-addresses list |
S8 — API / chain
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k / PgUp / PgDn / Home / End | Free-scroll the pending-tx table |
S6 — Peers + bin saturation + drill
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Move cursor in peer table |
PgUp / PgDn | Page through peers |
Home | Jump to first peer |
↵ | Drill into selected peer (4 endpoints in parallel) |
Esc | Close drill |
S9 — Tags / uploads
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Scroll one row |
PgUp / PgDn | Scroll ten rows |
Home | Back to top |
S11 — Pins
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Move cursor through the pinned-reference list |
↵ | Drill into selected pin (pin detail) |
Esc | Close drill |
S12 — Manifests
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Move cursor through the Mantaray tree |
↵ | Toggle expand / load the cursored fork (lazy fetch) |
The cursored row's reference (target hex, or fork self-address)
is rendered on a selected: detail line above the footer for
terminal-native click-drag copy — there's no explicit copy key.
S13 — Watchlist
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Move cursor through :watch-ref daemons |
S14 — Feed Timeline
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Move cursor through the feed update history |
PgUp / PgDn | Page ten entries |
S15 — Pubsub watch
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Move cursor through the merged PSS / GSOC timeline |
PgUp / PgDn | Page ten entries |
c | Clear the timeline (subscriptions stay open) |
The view scrolls to keep the cursored message visible, with a right-edge scrollbar when the timeline overflows (v1.16+).
S16 — Fleet view
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Move cursor through configured nodes |
↵ | Switch context to the cursored node |
r | Re-poll the cursored row now |
The view scrolls to keep the cursored node visible, with a right-edge scrollbar when the fleet overflows (v1.16+).
The command bar
: opens it. Once open:
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↵ | Run the typed command |
Esc | Close without running |
Backspace | Delete left |
| any printable | Append to command buffer |
See The :command bar for what each
command does.
Conventions
- The cockpit prefers vim-style keys (
j/k,:command,Esc-to-close) but every nav key has an arrow-key + named-key alias. You don't have to know vim. - No
Ctrl+chords for normal navigation. The cockpit reserves Ctrl-keys for terminal escape sequences (Ctrl+C exits via SIGINT, etc.). All screen actions are single keystrokes. Escis universal close. Whatever's most-recently opened — drill / help / command bar — is whatEsccloses. The hierarchy is: command bar > help overlay > drill > nothing.
Why qq instead of just q
A bee-tui session is something operators leave running in the
background while doing other work. A single q was found to
be too easy to misclick — especially when navigating in from
another shell. The double-tap guard means a stray keystroke
costs you a footer hint, not a session.
If you really want unguarded quit, use :q from the command
bar. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+D are also unguarded — they remain
the canonical "I want out now" escape hatches and bypass
the double-tap entirely.
Discovering keys
Open ? on any screen. The overlay shows the global keymap
plus the keys for the current screen. So pressing ? on
S6 lists peer-drill keys; pressing ? on S9 lists scroll
keys. No memorisation needed.
The node picker overlay
Ctrl+N (or :nodes) opens a centred overlay listing every
[[nodes]] entry from config.toml. The cursor lands on the
currently active node:
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
↑↓ / j k | Move cursor through configured nodes |
↵ | Switch to the cursored node (rebuilds API client + watch hub; no-op if cursor is already on the active node) |
Esc / Ctrl+N | Close without switching |
The active node is marked ● and the default = true entry is
marked ★. After switching, the metadata line at the top of the
cockpit updates to show the new profile and endpoint; any
:watch-ref daemons and pubsub subscriptions that were running
against the previous node are cancelled (they don't follow the
context — re-issue the verbs against the new node if you want them
there too).
The notification history overlay
Ctrl+Alt+N (or :notifications) opens a centred overlay listing the
most recent 200 alert transitions the cockpit has observed, newest
first. Same source as the toast overlay (and the optional
webhook / desktop notification sinks): every gate transition (S1
health gates + S15 fleet rows) becomes one entry, severity-coloured.
A problem that was already true at launch (a batch already near
expiry) is surfaced too, as an "at startup" entry — the overlay
isn't blind to pre-existing state (v1.15+).
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
Esc | Close |
Toasts appear in the top-right corner whenever a new transition is
ingested. They auto-dismiss after [notifications].toast_seconds
(default 8 s) and are capped at 3 visible at once. Disable them by
setting [notifications].toast_enabled = false in config.toml —
the history overlay still works.
Because toasts auto-dismiss, the top-bar awareness row also carries
a notif N chip (v1.15+) — a persistent, warn-coloured count of
notifications that have arrived since you last opened the history.
It's hidden at zero and cleared to zero the moment you open the
overlay, so it doubles as your "have I seen everything?" indicator.
The help overlay
? opens a centred overlay with two pages:
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
? | Toggle the overlay |
Tab / Shift+Tab | Switch between Keys and Verbs pages |
Esc / ? / q | Close |
The Keys page mirrors this cheatsheet (global keys + the
screen-specific block for whichever screen is active). The
Verbs page lists every :verb grouped by category (navigate,
inspect, stamps & economics, uploads, durability, pubsub, mining,
diagnostics, cockpit) so the entire surface is discoverable
without leaving the cockpit.
What's not bound
The cockpit deliberately leaves these unbound:
- Up/down arrow for screen jump —
Tab(or the digit keys) is the screen-jump path. Arrow keys are reserved for in-screen navigation. /for search — there's no global text search yet. Most screens are too short to need one, and where they aren't (S6 peers, S9 tags), you can scroll withj/k/PgDn/Home.