zsh shortcut 'ctrl + A' not working

zsh .zshrc

bindkey "^A" vi-beginning-of-line

you don't have to config the Ctrl+A behavior if you use default keymap (emacs keymap). It does what you are expecting.

However if you set your zle to use vi keymap, you have to define the keybind for vi-beginning-of-line. same for Ctrl+E.

So check which keymap did you set in config. If it was vi, try pressing ESC then ^ and $ should do what you want.

If you're wondering why this happened: You likely have $EDITOR or $VISUAL set to vi/vim which made zsh default to the vi keymap which doesn't use ctrl+a for moving the caret.

Adding bindkey -e to ~/.zshrc will restore the old behavior (emacs keymap).