Claude God Tip #9: Ctrl+G Has Finally Found a Purpose

Claude God Tip #9: Ctrl+G Has Finally Found a Purpose

Published: November 26, 2025 • 4 min read

Now if you live in the 21st century, you know what keyboard shortcuts are, so I am not going to explain that. In this blog post, we are going to explore a small Claude God tip.

The Problem with Terminal Prompting

A big part of using Claude Code in the terminal is prompting. And even though prompting directly in the terminal definitely feels cooler, there are times when you need to write and/or edit multiple lines of a prompt, and the terminal doesn't give you access to a few things like:

• Selecting a number of words and deleting them at once using the backspace key (rather than deleting letter by letter)
• Applying the Ctrl+Z command, which is every Computer Science student's life savior if you know what I'm talking about
• Moving to the next line using the Enter key (you have to use Shift+Enter instead)
• Easy restructuring of your prompt with numbered lists or bullet points

The Solution: Ctrl+G

All the above reasons and more is where the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+G becomes very useful.

When you type a prompt and go beyond the first line in the input box in your terminal, you will see the message: "(ctrl-g to edit prompt in Notepad)".

This shortcut allows you to type your prompt out in Notepad, which gives you a lot more flexibility when it comes to:

• Making edits to your prompt
• Structuring the prompt in a way that better communicates your message to the model
• Using numbered lists or bullet points in your prompt
• Selecting and deleting large chunks of text at once

Also, let's say you mistakenly pasted multiple lines of sentences in that input box and have to delete them all. Instead of holding down the backspace key forever, you can open up the prompt in Notepad using Ctrl+G and clear it all out instantly.

Important: When you make changes in Notepad, you have to save it (Ctrl+S) and then close the tab to return back to the input line in the terminal.

Bonus: Two More Terminal Shortcuts

Now I'm pretty sure there's a developer reading this and going, "Oh, she hasn't heard about Ctrl+A, or Ctrl+E, or Ctrl+U, or Ctrl+K, or Ctrl+W, or even Alt+Backspace."

I have, and I'll save that for a future blog post. But for the sake of this post, here are 2 more shortcuts that might be useful if you do not want to edit your prompts in Notepad:

Note: If you use the backspace key to delete text, you cannot restore it using Ctrl+Y. Only content deleted with Ctrl+U can be restored.

Why the Dramatic Title?

Now if you made it to this point, you are probably wondering: "Why the dramatic title 'Ctrl+G Has Finally Found a Purpose'? What was going through Prisca's head when she chose that title?"

Well, here's my thought process.

Pause and think: before now, have you ever had any reason to use the Ctrl+G keyboard combination?

Every letter that appears before G in the English alphabet is tied to a popular function. Let's run through them (focusing on their functionality in Microsoft Word) so you see what I'm talking about:

Now tell me, have you ever had to use Ctrl+G in your life? Like, ever?

I'd argue that Ctrl+D is also yet to find its true purpose, except it is useful in a browser when you want to bookmark a page. But Ctrl+G? The "Go to page number" function? When was the last time anyone used that?

But you see, now Ctrl+G has a purpose. And it will become useful in our daily lives, at least if you interact with Claude through the terminal.

A Fun Fact for French Speakers

Now you should note that if your computer settings are in French and you use Microsoft Word in French, you have to use the Ctrl+G keyboard shortcut to make text bold since G stands for "gras," which in the context of MS Word translates to bold in English.

So for my French-speaking friends, Ctrl+G already had a purpose. The rest of us are just catching up.

As always, thanks for reading!