How to disable double tab to show available commands in Bash?

Is there a way to disable the double tab key behaviour (pressing tab twice shows available commands in Bash)?


Bash uses readline for completion and key bindings. You can set your own options in ~/.inputrc, and system wide options in /etc/inputrc. If these do not exist, you can create them yourself. These are read at shell login, so changes you make are not in effect until you create a new login shell.

If you want to disable completion entirely, you can use a typical GNU "yes to no":

set disable-completion on

If you want completion, but just not with tab, you can bind tab to insert itself:

TAB: self-insert

This will allow you to still use completion with ESC ESC, or you can bind completion to another key of your liking, e.g. C-t:

TAB: self-insert
C-t: complete

There is a huge amount of customization you can do; I refer you to the Readline and Bash documentation for more information.


You can pick and choose the key mappings you wish to disable without having to turn off autocomplete.

Example: To disable autocomplete for multiple Esc key presses add the following to your ~/.inputrc:

"\e\e": ""

Read the "Readline" section of the bash man page for detailed information.