Clear terminal using keyboard shortcut

In gnome terminal, you can edit the keyboard shortcuts with Edit -> Reset Shortcuts... You can then map the command "Reset and Clear", which seems to do what you're looking for.

Alternatively, you can limit the scrollback history to a small number (say 0) and Ctrl+L will be closer to what you are looking for.

• CTRL+u clears from cursor to beginning of line

• CTRL+k clears from cursor to end of line

• CTRL+d clears one character to the right of the cursor

• Esc+Backspace clears one word to the left of the cursor

• Esc+d clears one word to the right of the cursor

• Alt+left/right jumps to the beginning of the previous/next word

• Ctr+a jumps to start of line

• Ctr+e jumps to end of line

To clear the entire screen add the following alias to your ~/.bashrc file:

alias cls="echo -ne '\033c'"

Now, in a new terminal typing cls will clear everything including the scroll buffer. It works much faster than reset since it does not reset anything.

In fact reset is only needed when you want to fix a broken terminal, e.g. after running cat on a binary file.

If you are on OSX, then Command (⌘)+k will clear the terminal _{(also works in the chrome devtools console)}.