La Tinaja

Escaping on an iPad with no Esc key

14 Mar 2019

I’ve recently been connecting to a DigitalOcean droplet with the mosh shell using the Blink app on my iPad. It’s been a fun way to do some light web development work away from my desk at home without having to lug a lot of gear.

I’m using Apple’s smart folio keyboard for the time-being. It does not have an Esc key.

I’ve gotten around a lot of my Esc key muscle memory already (I end up in all caps by accident a lot because Esc is mapped to Caps Lock on my Mac), but I found myself in vim on the server this morning and realized I had no idea how to leave insert mode without an Esc key.

Turns out Ctrl + [ sends the same ASCII code that Esc does. Now I know.