# Optimize your terminal setup

> Claude Code works best when your terminal is properly configured. Follow these guidelines to optimize your experience.

### Themes and appearance

Claude cannot control the theme of your terminal. That's handled by your terminal application. You can match Claude Code's theme to your terminal any time via the `/config` command.

For additional customization of the Claude Code interface itself, you can configure a [custom status line](/en/docs/claude-code/statusline) to display contextual information like the current model, working directory, or git branch at the bottom of your terminal.

### Line breaks

You have several options for entering linebreaks into Claude Code:

* **Quick escape**: Type `\` followed by Enter to create a newline
* **Keyboard shortcut**: Set up a keybinding to insert a newline

#### Set up Shift+Enter (VS Code or iTerm2):

Run `/terminal-setup` within Claude Code to automatically configure Shift+Enter.

#### Set up Option+Enter (VS Code, iTerm2 or macOS Terminal.app):

**For Mac Terminal.app:**

1. Open Settings → Profiles → Keyboard
2. Check "Use Option as Meta Key"

**For iTerm2 and VS Code terminal:**

1. Open Settings → Profiles → Keys
2. Under General, set Left/Right Option key to "Esc+"

### Notification setup

Never miss when Claude completes a task with proper notification configuration:

#### iTerm 2 system notifications

For iTerm 2 alerts when tasks complete:

1. Open iTerm 2 Preferences
2. Navigate to Profiles → Terminal
3. Enable "Silence bell" and Filter Alerts → "Send escape sequence-generated alerts"
4. Set your preferred notification delay

Note that these notifications are specific to iTerm 2 and not available in the default macOS Terminal.

#### Custom notification hooks

For advanced notification handling, you can create [notification hooks](/en/docs/claude-code/hooks#notification) to run your own logic.

### Handling large inputs

When working with extensive code or long instructions:

* **Avoid direct pasting**: Claude Code may struggle with very long pasted content
* **Use file-based workflows**: Write content to a file and ask Claude to read it
* **Be aware of VS Code limitations**: The VS Code terminal is particularly prone to truncating long pastes

### Vim Mode

Claude Code supports a subset of Vim keybindings that can be enabled with `/vim` or configured via `/config`.

The supported subset includes:

* Mode switching: `Esc` (to NORMAL), `i`/`I`, `a`/`A`, `o`/`O` (to INSERT)
* Navigation: `h`/`j`/`k`/`l`, `w`/`e`/`b`, `0`/`$`/`^`, `gg`/`G`
* Editing: `x`, `dw`/`de`/`db`/`dd`/`D`, `cw`/`ce`/`cb`/`cc`/`C`, `.` (repeat)