You achieve this by putting the following 4 lines in your $HOME/.inputrc file: "\e[A": history-search-backward "\e[B": history-search-forward set show-al

You achieve this by putting the following 4 lines in your $HOME/.inputrc file: "\e[A": history-search-backward "\e[B": history-search-forward set show-all-if-ambiguous on set completion-ignore-case on From now on, when you type part of a command, uparrow and downarrow provide you with incremental search based on your command history.