litefe

A minimal terminal text editor for Linux

• mouse support
• real selection
• copy / cut / paste, multi-level undo / redo, find, go-to-line

Build

Needs only a C compiler + libc:

cc -O2 -Wall -o litefe litefe.c

Install (optional)

sudo cp litefe /usr/local/bin/

Keys

Key	Action
Ctrl-S / Ctrl-Q	save / quit
Ctrl-F · Ctrl-N/F3	find · find next
Ctrl-G	go to line
Ctrl-C Ctrl-X Ctrl-V Ctrl-A	copy · cut · paste · select all
Ctrl-Z / Ctrl-Y	undo / redo
Ctrl-D / Ctrl-K	duplicate line · cut line
Shift+arrows	select · Ctrl+Left/Right word jump
Ctrl-T	set mark, then move to select (for terminals that eat Shift+arrow, e.g. macOS Terminal.app); Esc cancels
Ctrl-B	toggle mouse mode
Ctrl-H	help

Press Ctrl-H inside the editor for the full list.

Mouse modes

Toggle with Ctrl-B:

• Desktop (default): the terminal owns the mouse, so native drag-select and the right-click menu work and copy plain text. Line numbers are hidden so a selection stays clean, and the mouse wheel scrolls the document.
• In-app: click places the cursor, drag makes an editor selection, the wheel scrolls, and line numbers are shown.

Copy / cut also push to the system clipboard via OSC 52.