Micro: Making File Editing Easier in Linux Terminal

Micro

Micro is made with the GO Programming Language. It’s actively being developed by Zachary Yedidia and many other open source enthusiasts are contributing to it.

According to Micro’s GitHub project documentation,

Micro aims to be easy to use and intuitive, while also taking advantage of the full capabilities of modern terminals.

And that’s true. You’re probably wondering what’s special about this one, there are plenty of other terminal-based text editors out there. The answer is that Micro is so easy to use that the learning curve is almost flat, you don’t need to learn anything new, and it has some very interesting features.

Features

sudo apt install micro

This will install xclip as a dependency for clipboard functionality.

Additionally, you can download the pre-built binary from the link below:

Once you download it, extract the file and you’ll find the binary file inside it. Copy this binary file to your /bin directory. And then, you can run it in the terminal using the command “micro”.

For clipboard support, you need xclip and xsel packages. In Ubuntu and other Ubuntu based Linux distributions, you can use the following command to install it:

sudo apt install xclip

For detailed information on configuring Micro, see here.

Function	Command
Open a File in Micro	micro [FILENAME]
To List Available Plug-Ins	micro -plugin available
To Install a  Plug-In	micro -plugin install [PLUGIN]
To Remove a Plug-In	micro -plugin remove [PLUGIN]
To Execute a Command inside Micro	Ctrl + E
To Split open a file Horizontally through command	hsplit [FILENAME]
To Split open a file Vertically through command	vsplit [FILENAME]
To get Help inside Micro Editor	Ctrl + G
To Save a File	Ctrl + S
To Copy Text Inside Micro	Ctrl + C
To Paste Text Inside Micro	Ctrl + V
To Close Micro Editor	Ctrl + Q
To Move Through Available Commands	TAB (Shift + Tab for reverse direction)

Thoughts about Micro?

I think that Micro’s a pretty good tool for text editing. Though it’s not feature-rich like Vim or other mature text editors, it can easily replace tools like Nano for occasional file editing in the terminal.

If you often have to edit files in the terminal but you don’t feel too comfortable with Vim, give it a try and tell us about your experience.