Source: APeriodic.net

screen Quick Reference

Getting in

start a newscreen session with session name	screen -S
list running sessions/screens	screen -ls
attach to a running session	screen -r
… to session with name	screen -r
the “ultimate attach”	screen -dRR (Attaches to a screen session. If the session is attached elsewhere, detaches that other display. If no session exists, creates one. If multiple sessions exist, uses the first one.)

Escape key

All screen commands are prefixed by an escape key, by default C-a (that's Control-a, sometimes written ^a). To send a literal C-a to the programs in screen, use C-a a.

Getting out

detach	C-a d
detach and logout (quick exit)	C-a D D
exit screen	“C-a : quit” or exit all of the programs in screen.
force-exit screen	C-a C-\ (not recommended)

Help

See help

C-a ? (lists keybindings)

The man page is the complete reference, but it's very long.

Window Management

create new window	C-a c
change to last-visited active window	C-a C-a (commonly used to flip-flop between two windows)
change to window by number	C-a  (only for windows 0 to 9)
change to window by number or name	C-a '
change to next window in list	C-a n or C-a
change to previous window in list	C-a p or C-a
see window list	C-a " (allows you to select a window to change to)
show window bar	C-a w (if you don't have window bar)
close current window	Close all applications in the current window (including shell)
kill current window	C-a k (not recommended)
kill all windows	C-a \ (not recommended)
rename current window	C-a A

Split screen

split display horizontally	C-a S
split display vertically	C-a | or C-a V (for the vanilla vertical screen patch)
jump to next display region	C-a tab
remove current region	C-a X
remove all regions but the current one	C-a Q

Scripting

send a command to a named session	screen -S  -X
create a new window and run ping example.com	screen -S  -X screen ping example.com
stuff characters into the input buffer using bash to expand a newline character (from here)	screen -S <name> [-p <page>] -X stuff $'quit\r'
a full example	# run bash within screen screen -AmdS bash_shell bash # run top within that bash session screen -S bash_shell -p 0 -X stuff $'top\r'   # ... some time later   # stuff 'q' to tell top to quit screen -S bash_shell -X stuff 'q' # stuff 'exit\n' to exit bash session screen -S bash_shell -X stuff $'exit\r'

Misc

redraw window	C-a C-l
enter copy mode	C-a [ or C-a  (also used for viewing scrollback buffer)
paste	C-a ]
monitor window for activity	C-a M
monitor window for silence	C-a _
enter digraph (for producing non-ASCII characters)	C-a C-v
lock (password protect) display	C-a x
enter screen command	C-a :