Accept ^[ as Escape

[theteachr]

I'm used to pressing Ctrl [ for Esc in (neo)Vim. Can we have it work the same way in Helix?

[a3lem]

Have you tried different terminals, by any chance? I just tried Ctrl-[ in Helix (in Kitty) and I got an escape.

[seungjin]

Helix on Kitty, Ctrl-[ does not do ESC.
Also Helix on Ghostty,, not doing it.
Using Linux.

[a3lem]

Nor, apparently, does Helix in Alacritty, Terminal, or iTerm on macOS. Huh... So it's really only Kitty. It's probably translating ctrl-[ to escape or something.

[theteachr]

Not only Kitty, but also the integrated terminals in Zed and VS Code do the conversion.

[mweihs]

To make it work in Kitty, add the following to your kitty.conf:
map ctrl+[ send_key escape

[oxcrow]

In terminator terminal Ctrl-[ seems to work like Escape.

[christianfosli]

You can add a keymap for it:

[keys.insert]
"C-[" = "normal_mode"

More info on #6551

[seungjin]

"normal_mode" is not escape.
Escape at search escapes search mode but "normal_mode" does nothing.