I absolutely love how zsh implemented the prefix search with an "arrow-up" key.
this feature is extremely useful for a long commands with lots of arguments, such as starting docker containers.
but! the arrow keys are not so convenient to reach, especially when you touch-type-wannabe.
let's remap the ctrl+p, which is usually stands for "scroll history back",
to do the same as "arrow-up" in zsh:
bindkey "^P" up-line-or-beginning-search
bindkey "^N" down-line-or-beginning-search
update: without oh-my-zsh you (probably) have to load the plugin by hand.
add the following to your .zshrc:
autoload -U up-line-or-beginning-search
autoload -U down-line-or-beginning-search
zle -N up-line-or-beginning-search
zle -N down-line-or-beginning-search
also, it's helpful to run bindkey to list the current keybinging
configuration, zsh appears to have A LOT of interesting features by default! go
take a look!
related stackoverflow post
history control from zsh docs