Indeed, the up and down arrow keys will scroll through top
on newer versions, specifically at least on the version of top
that comes with Ubuntu 16.04.2 (procps-ng
version 3.3.10).
But if the arrow keys don't work to scroll for you, it could just be an issue with your terminal emulator.
Take a look at the top
man page:
Lastly, some of top's screens or functions require the use of cursor motion keys like the standard arrow keys plus the Home, End, PgUp and PgDn keys. If your terminal or emulator does not provide those keys, the following combinations are accepted as alternatives:
key equivalent-key-combinations
Up alt + \ or alt + k
Down alt + / or alt + j
Left alt + < or alt + h
Right alt + > or alt + l (lower case L)
PgUp alt + Up or alt + ctrl + k
PgDn alt + Down or alt + ctrl + j
Home alt + Left or alt + ctrl + h
End alt + Right or alt + ctrl + l
So if the up and down arrow keys don't work for you (make sure you hold them down, as deto said), try pressing alt + \
, alt + /
, alt + k
and alt + j
.
Note that this section of the man page does not exist on my RHEL 6.6 machine, which has procps-ng
version 3.2.8 (you can see the version number with top -v
), and so that version of top
does not appear have any scrolling capability.