Modifying termux keyboard to get extra keys

I use termux quite a lot when working with shell using my android phone. The older version of tmux has a good vertical keyboard, with essential keys like tab and arrow keys are all accessible in the main keyboard interface. The newer version of tmux, however, does not provide the full arrow keys in the main interface, like below. You can see that only up and down arrow keys are provided.

One good thing about termux is, it is customizable. And you can put whatever key you want on the keyboard interface, like below, just by following simple steps.

1. Open your termux

2. You need to edit a file called "~/.termux/termux.properties". Create the directory if it does not exist.

$ mkdir ~/.termux

3. Start editing the file. You can use any editor like nano or vim (needs to be installed). For the sake of simplicity, I just use cat. Run below command and press enter to edit.

$ cat > ~/.termux/termux.properties

4. Paste the line below to add 2 rows of extra keys. The first row will be populated with ESC, |, HOME, up arrow, END, PGUP and DEL keys, and the second row will be populated with TAB, CTRL, ALT,  left arrow, down arrow, right arrow, page down and backspace keys. Please customize this setting to your liking. You can find the supported keys here

extra-keys = [ \

 ['ESC','|','/','HOME','UP','END','PGUP','DEL'], \

 ['TAB','CTRL','ALT','LEFT','DOWN','RIGHT','PGDN','BKSP'] \

]

5. Press ctrl-d to save the file.

6. Reload termux settings, by running "termux-reload-settings" command.

$ termux-reload-settings

Your vertical keyboard is now added with more keys as per the configuration you have just put in.

Happy typing.