How can I change the keyboard shortcuts in nano?

Question

To indent a whole block of code in nano, after selecting it with alt+a, I have to press alt+{, which doesn't work on my german layout macintosh keyboard (and would be pretty annoying even if it did).

How do I change and customize nano's keyboard shortcuts?

Answer 1

The file /etc/nanorc contains some options that should allow you to customize the shortcuts used on the editor. Please note that this is a global config file and will modify the options for all users on your system.

Further details on the available options are given on the man nanorc page (the list is just too big to reproduce here):

It should be possible to keep the options localized only to your user by copying the system configuration file in to your user's home directory with

cp /etc/nanorc ~/.nanorc

and doing the modifications necessary there.

The configuration file on your home directory will prevail over the global settings one.