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# Moving Around in Nano Editor
- URL: https://linuxhandbook.com/nano-moving-around/
- Published: 2024-06-03T08:56:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-08-22T16:03:27.000Z
- Description: Moving around in Nano cannot be simpler. Just use the arrow keys or the mouse wheel, whichever you prefer.
- Author: Abhishek Prakash
- Tags: Nano Essentials, #docs-col, #group-getting-started

Once you know how to open and close files in Nano, let's talk about moving around in the editor. 

It's simple and pretty much the same as a regular text editor:

- Use **up-down arrow keys** to **move up and down line by line**
- Use **left and right arrow keys** to **move left and right character by character**
- Use **page up and page down keys** to **move up and down by pages**

📋

There are no modes in Nano. You just start using the keys to move around.

## Using arrow keys to move around

The simplest way, really. Use the down arrow key to move down a line, the up arrow key to move up a line. Press and hold to keep on moving line by line.

0:00 

/0:11 

1× 

Moving up and down using up and down arrow keys

Similarly, you can use left and right arrow keys to move horizontally a line. Which is moving by characters.

0:00 

/0:12 

1× 

Moving left and right using arrow left and right arrow keys

## Use page up-down keys

If you have a large text file, you can use the Page-Up and Page-Down keys to move by a page (visible lines on the screen).

Can it get any simpler than this? I don't think so.

## Jumping lines

You can also use keyboard shortcuts to jump to the beginning or end of file and line.

- Use home and end keys to jump to the beginning and end of a line
- Use Ctrl+home and Ctrl+end keys to jump to the beginning and end of file

💡

You may also use mouse wheel to scroll up and down in Nano. If your terminal is configured to use mouse wheel, it should work.

## Conclusion

See, unlike Vi and Vim, there are no different modes. No h j k l kind of keys here. You use the standard keys that are used in most editors like Notepad, Gedit and whatnot. That's why Nano is considered more suitable for beginners.