GNU Nano, the widely used terminal text editor, has reached version 9.0, with the most visible change being a reworked horizontal scrolling behavior.
In Nano 9.0, when the cursor nears the right edge of the screen, lines scroll sideways only as much as needed to keep the cursor visible. This replaces the older per-line horizontal movement that could feel abrupt during editing. Users who prefer the previous behavior can restore it with the --solosidescroll option or the set solosidescroll setting in nanorc.
The update also adds direct sideways viewport scrolling via M-< and M->, moving in steps of one tab size. Additionally, M-Left, M-Right, M-Up, and M-Down are now rebindable, giving users more control over keyboard navigation.
Macro handling has also been adjusted. Stopping a macro recording immediately after starting it now cancels the recording instead of overwriting an existing macro. Nano 9.0 also changes how feature toggles interact with repeated cut and copy actions so they no longer interrupt a chain of ^K cuts or M-6 copies, except for the M-K cut-from-cursor toggle.
For mouse users, in Nano 9.0, when running with both --mouse and --indicator, users can click in the scrollbar area to move roughly through the current buffer.
For more details, see the announcement. The full changelog can be found here. Nano 9.0 is available as source code on the official website for anyone who wants to compile it manually. Everyone else can wait for it to arrive in their distribution’s repositories.
