# A short guide to nano

> A short guide to nano, the beginner friendly UNIX text editor, where you type directly with no modes and save or quit with the ctrl key shortcuts shown.

Author: [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/about/) | Published: 2020-11-04 | Topics: [CLI](https://flaviocopes.com/tags/cli/) | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/linux-command-nano/

`nano` is a beginner friendly editor.

Run it using `nano <filename>`.

You can directly type characters into the file without worrying about modes.

You can quit without editing using `ctrl-X`. If you edited the file buffer, the editor will ask you for confirmation and you can save the edits, or discard them. The help at the bottom shows you the keyboard commands that let you work with the file:

![nano editor interface showing text buffer with testing typed and keyboard shortcuts at bottom](https://flaviocopes.com/images/linux-command-nano/Screenshot_2019-02-10_at_11.03.51.png)

`pico` is more or less the same, although `nano` is the GNU version of `pico` which at some point in history was not open source and the `nano` clone was made to satisfy the GNU operating system license requirements.