How to send the escape character on OS X terminal?

Question

Connecting with telnet looks like this:

$ telnet some.host
Trying 10.1.2.3...
Connected to some.host.
Escape character is '^]'.

I'm running this on the OS X Leopard terminal. Question is, how do I send this escape character? On a Linux terminal I'd try ESC-5 or CTRL-5, but I cannot figure out how to do this on OS X.

score 85 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 27 '20 at 18:10

85

The ^] means ctrl + right bracket. As strange as that is, it works. You'll be taken to the telnet prompt, where you can type quit.

On international keyboards the ] character is often not a single key, and needs to be replaced with some other key. The correct key is typically the key to the right of P or the next key after that.

Here's a list based on comments below:

Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish: ctrl + å
French: ctrl + 6
German: ctrl + ü
Swiss: ctrl + ¨
Hungarian: ctrl + 5
Portuguese: ctrl + ´
Dutch, Belgian: ctrl + $
Canadian French: ctrl + ç
Italian: ctrl + +

edited Feb 27 '20 at 18:10

Ilario

105

answered Jul 15 '09 at 08:48

jtbandes

8,870

Ctrl+] is right! – Mark Amerine Turner Jul 15 '09 at 08:51
5

Ahhh, of course. Except that with my Finnish keyboard layout, it's control + å. Naturally. Thanks :) – Ville Laurikari Jul 15 '09 at 08:53
1

And on the french keyboard it’s ctrl-6. – kmkaplan Feb 05 '11 at 18:58
4

On German Keyboard on OSX it is CTRL-Ü (Umlaut U) – Jul 29 '11 at 18:54
1

On a Swiss Keyboard it is Ctrl-¨. Why o why did the telnet developer need to use the group separator GS. So difficult to type on foreign keyboards. – Martin May 08 '12 at 15:31
6

on Hungarian (and many more) it is Ctrl+5 – törzsmókus May 15 '12 at 10:13
1

Ctrl+å in sweden – fredrik Oct 11 '12 at 07:13
1

On a belgian keyboard it is ctrl + $ – tom Aug 21 '13 at 07:04
This doesn't work on newer OSX machines, at least not with iTerm. – Robert Hafner Dec 21 '17 at 21:36
In Spanish/Latin Keyboard it is Ctrl + 5 – Andrés Morales Dec 03 '18 at 17:56
Nothing works w/ Japanese keyboard. – Jonny Jul 05 '19 at 06:07
Turkish Ctrl + Shift + Ü – mcolak Jul 31 '19 at 11:21
Another method is to find out which key combination produces the ] key (on a German keyboard it's option-6) and then press those together with the ctrl key (German: ctrl-option-6). Both methods (incl. ctrl-ü) work on macOS 10.13 in Terminal.app). – SuperTempel Oct 30 '20 at 09:44
1

Form me on a German Keyboard Layout its also ctrl + 5 – ArgonQQ Mar 17 '21 at 07:55
In a Portuguese keyboard it is CTRL + 5, not CTRl + ´ – andresp Jul 20 '23 at 09:29
This is insane
On Czech QWERTZ keyboard, it was Ctrl+AltGr+G – dakur Sep 15 '23 at 09:22

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 17 '17 at 14:30

2

Workaround for those who have problems finding the shortcut:

Change your systems keyboard language to U.S international - PC (System Settings/keyboard/input sources)
Look at an image of a US keyboard layout and ctrl+] the corresponding keys on your keyboard

answered Feb 17 '17 at 14:30

elhombre

333

1

The accepted answer gives some international examples, but this (especially part 2) is the more generic explanation. – Duvrai May 06 '20 at 15:55

How to send the escape character on OS X terminal?

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