# The keys a phone does not have

> ctrl, esc, tab and the arrows, as a row above the keyboard that does not scroll away — and a latch instead of a chord, because you cannot hold two keys with one thumb.

A soft keyboard has letters. It has no ctrl, no alt, no arrows and no escape —
and every CLI worth driving is driven by exactly those.

So a [pane](https://beafk.app/docs/the-terminal.md) brings its own row, above the keyboard, and it
does not scroll away.

## The row

| the cap | what it is for |
| --- | --- |
| **esc** | back out of whatever the thing you are running has opened |
| **^C** | stop it. Its own cap, because two taps is one too many for this one |
| **ctrl** | held for the next key you press — see below |
| **⇥** | tab, which on a shell is completion and in an agent is the next field |
| **← ↑ ↓ →** | one cluster, at the right thumb, in the same place forever |
| **⌨** | put the keyboard back up when you have dismissed it |
| **⋯** | the second row |

## ctrl is a latch, not a chord

You cannot hold two keys with one thumb, so the modifiers are **state** rather
than a chord.

Tap **ctrl** and it lights up. The next key you press — from this row *or from
your own keyboard* — is sent with ctrl held, and then the latch lets go. That is
how one cap reaches the whole family: `ctrl` then `r` is `^R`, `ctrl` then `a`
is `^A`, `ctrl` then `w` rubs out a word.

Tap it **twice** and it locks until you tap it a third time, for the stretch
where every key is a chord.

## The second row

**⋯** opens what is worth a button and not worth the space: `alt` — a latch of
the same kind — `⇧⇥`, `^D`, `^Z`, `^R`, `^L`, and the four characters a phone
keyboard buries two layers down: `|`, `~`, `/`, `-`.

## On a laptop there is no row at all

That keyboard already has those keys. What stays is the type size, which no
keyboard has — **A−** and **A+** in the pane itself.

## Why this is not a setting

There is nothing to configure. The row is the same row on every machine and in
every pane, and its caps are in the same places tomorrow.

Everything else about panes — where one comes from, reading output on a small
screen, running several at once — is
[running a line yourself](https://beafk.app/docs/the-terminal.md).

---

beafk documentation · The panel · https://beafk.app/docs/keys-a-phone-does-not-have

In this section:
- The home screen — https://beafk.app/docs/the-home-screen.md
- Settings — https://beafk.app/docs/settings.md
- Pictures, both ways — https://beafk.app/docs/pictures-both-ways.md
- Seeing it before it is built — https://beafk.app/docs/seeing-it-before-it-is-built.md
- Running a line yourself — https://beafk.app/docs/the-terminal.md
- The keys a phone does not have — https://beafk.app/docs/keys-a-phone-does-not-have.md (this page)

Every page, one line each: https://beafk.app/docs/llms.txt
All of it in one file: https://beafk.app/docs/llms-full.txt