Support Option+Delete / Ctrl+Delete for word-by-word deletion in input editor

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Mar 15, 2026 by mjpensa Closed Mar 18, 2026

Feature Request

The Claude Code input editor currently only supports character-by-character deletion with Backspace/Delete. Standard macOS word-deletion shortcuts — Option+Delete (backward kill word) and Control+Delete — do not work, deleting only a single character instead.

These shortcuts work everywhere else in macOS (Terminal with zsh/bash, text editors, browsers, etc.) and their absence makes editing longer prompts in Claude Code noticeably slower.

Expected Behavior

  • Option+Delete (⌥⌫): Delete the previous word (backward-kill-word)
  • Control+Delete / Control+Backspace: Delete the previous word
  • Option+Forward Delete (⌥⌦ / ⌥fn⌫): Delete the next word (kill-word)

Current Behavior

All of these key combinations delete only a single character, same as a plain Backspace/Delete press.

Context

The input editor is a Node.js TUI that handles its own key events, bypassing the shell's readline/bindkey system. Users who have bindkey '\e\x7f' backward-kill-word in their .zshrc and "Use Option as Meta key" enabled in Terminal.app still can't use word deletion inside Claude Code.

Environment

  • macOS (Apple Terminal, but likely affects all terminal emulators)
  • Claude Code CLI

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