The only (deal breaker for me ) weakness of zellij - doesn't support copy/paste from the keyboard (from the screen/scrollback) and doesn't support multiple copy/paste buffers.
I do that roughly every 60-90 seconds with tmux - so, until the zellij developers relent (they suggest the "proper way" of copy paste is to pipe the data into a text editor and use that - but has the downside of not supporting system copy-paste buffers.) - no options other than to stick with tmux (or fork zellij - but that seems a bit much....)
Screaming into the void, I guess, but PSA. Don't use buttons for links. In my case, I couldn't right-click and copy the URL, but there are a lot of other reasons not to do this.
It also breaks a lot of a11y tooling. It really helps a lot of people when developers care about semantic html.
I personally suggest web devs to install axe devtools [0] in their dev browser profile. Also, LLMs have gotten to the point that even the small local models can help a lot [1].
Zellij still can't hide/show the status bar on the fly[1] and doesn't support windows preview in the windows list mode. Just these two (and many more) things are enough to stop me from migrating from tmux.
I did the same, however, I recently switched back because zellij has just gotten too annoyingly bloated. I ended up on tmuxp to build my tmux session and autossh to keep me connected to my various ssh sessions and am much happier.
Last time I tried zellij, a bunch of the default keybinds conflicted with default commands, or maybe vim commands, I can't remember. But the "solution" back then was constantly jumping in and out of "locked" mode, where no zellij keybindings except unlock work.
Didn't seem worth it, considering the giant footprint in comparison to tmux.
I tried tmux so many times, could not commit the sequences to memory, but then zellij was just out of the gate, easy to "discover," and then I started writing plugins (rust wasm), and I even submitted a PR which got accepted to support background colors in panes/tabs.
I am a monthly donor, I think it has the right balance of community plus the lead dev has a vision, opinionated but open to inputs, and focused.
Once I discovered window managers and graphics, I stopped using half-baked features to emulate them in the terminal.
I use tmux to reattach to programs after the network connection dies, and not really anything else. I would welcome a version of it that stripped out everything but that, and just replayed the last few pages of scrollback on reattach.
I used tmux for a few years, until one day I discovered Zellij. With its significantly better UI and overall user experience, I was instantly convinced.
Same here. I bounced off it a few times because KDE konsole already had built in tab/pane support but once I picked up neovim the key chords for triggering actions just made so much sense compared to the static key binds of Console that I just started using Zellij for tabs and panes within Console.
I left tmux for zellij after several unsuccessful attempts to get Shift+Enter working.
Was quite impressed initially and invested weeks in building new muscle memory, but somehow Zellij crashed with panic more than once, leaving all my processes orphaned. Decided to go back to tmux, and found a simple fix for my Shift+Enter issue.
Is it possible for a multiplexer process to die, but in such a bad way that its child processes continue to run?
I’ve been relying on the fact that in the worst-case scenario (if a pane hangs and tmux session becomes unresponsive) I can just kill tmux server and not have to hunt down and kill dozens of individual processes afterwards.
A `kill -9` will cause many a process to die and give no chance to cleanup any child processes. Some percentage of users continue to use `kill -9` by default, which may result in a mess of a process tree. Otherwise if the crash is bad enough that cleanup code cannot run (maybe it's being run on OpenBSD and an incompetent programmer didn't check the return value of a malloc and for some reason the kernel now nukes the process) then there may be orphan children. There may also be sporadic failures to cleanup if the crash, maybe, causes the whole process to exit before the cleanup code in some other thread can run. System load average may also influence how things maybe go sideways.
Maybe some keybind in a software. Another mentions Claude code, so it may be used to enter new line where enter is bound to send the prompt.
Terminal programs don’t see key events. It’s all text. I just checked st (suckless) code and the RETURN key will send “\r” aka carriage return. Control+j is “\n” or line feed.
Guys, did you know about tmux control mode? It tells the host terminal to treat tmux tabs as actual tabs in the terminal. That means that things like scrollback, tab navigation, copy paste, keyboard shortcuts, etc are all handled natively, and you can visually see all your tmux tabs! It doesn't have great support across all terminals, but it does work great in iTerm 2.
Try `tmux -CC` in iTerm.
For a tmux novice like me, this was a total game changer :)
To switch around quick. So on my system I've got Super-{1-9} for workspaces, Alt-{1-9} for tmux panes.
Also if you want a vi-like copy mode (where you can select and copy stuff) that opens using Alt-/:
bind-key -n M-/ copy-mode
set -g status-keys vi
set-window-option -g mode-keys vi
# v to trigger selection
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi v send-keys -X begin-selection
# wl-copy if you use wayland
# mouse selection in copy mode to copy
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi MouseDragEnd1Pane send -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "wl-copy"
# y to copy
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "wl-copy"
And btw, Ctrl-Shift-v to paste system clipboard
You can also put the config into ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf
edit: And if you want a powerline-style design:
set -g pane-border-style "fg=colour252"
set -g pane-active-border-style "fg=colour25"
set -g status-style "bg=default,fg=default"
set -g status-left "#[fg=colour231,bg=colour25,bold] #S #[fg=colour25,bg=default,nobold]"
set -g status-right "#[fg=colour67,bg=default]#[fg=colour231,bg=colour67] %Y-%m-%d %H:%M #[fg=colour25,bg=colour67]#[fg=colour231,bg=colour25,bold] #h "
setw -g window-status-format "#[fg=colour243,bg=default] #I #W "
setw -g window-status-current-format "#[fg=colour28,bg=default,reverse]#[fg=colour231,bg=colour28,bold,noreverse] #I #W #[fg=colour28,bg=default,noreverse]"
I had my tmux customized to the point I forgot how to use it on a clean install which is a problem when I'm sshing into a server.
I wish it had better defaults but now I run it as is. After a while you get used to it. The only thing I always have to change is the mouse scroll and my brain cannot retain the exact command.
I think of this as the curse of Emacs. Infinitely configurable, thereafter entirely unique in the universe, which can be a double edged sword. See too (maybe it's the same thing) The Lisp Curse.[0]
I've hit this problem multiple times. The approach which finally eased this pain point for me was to take care to not overwrite any tmux defaults with my config, and only add non-conflicting configs (new shortcuts, styling changes, etc.) That way, if I need to use tmux on a new or unfamiliar machine, the core functionality is still present, and I just miss the candy that comes with customization.
For example, leave the existing prefix binding (ctrl-b), but also add something nicer for day-to-day use (ctrl-space or similar).
> I had my tmux customized to the point I forgot how to use it on a clean install which is a problem when I'm sshing into a server.
I had the same issue with gnu emacs… but at some point i lost my very custom configuration when the disk broke… i resorted to use a mostly-vanilla emacs :)
I can't speak for the parent, but I rarely login to the same remote server twice and don't want to need to set things up and clean them up anytime I do. This is why I try to keep my stuff as close to vanilla as possible. If anything goes wrong on a server and someone sees I have a whole bunch of dot files to customize my config, it becomes a red herring that I have to spend time explaining away.
Sometimes I ssh into a server as a specific user (e.g. as the "app" user that is used to run a web app), sometimes only root is available (probably not best practice, but it's not like I can or want to fix it myself).
In any case it's not practical to carry your dotfiles everywhere you go. Changes are also a hassle to propagate
I've been thoroughly impressed with tmux control mode[0] in iTerm2. This lets you manage remote terminal windows with your local window management provider. It is currently in the process of being implemented in ghostty[1] as well, can't wait!
Disclaimer: I am being silly but serious. tmux is absolutely not user-friendly out of the box. It is, however, extremely nice after an absurd amount of tweaking, which is either an endorsement or a damning, depending on your perspective.
I dunno. I have yet to change any tmux settings, but I find it perfectly usable.
I guess it depends on what you want out of it. I’ve memorized about nine shortcuts, and that’ll all I’ve ever needed: ctrl+b and c, n, p, s, d, $, ‘,’, or PageUp/PageDown
# Mindless copy and paste command:
#
# # Standard Linux / GNU tools
# wget -O ~/.tmux.conf https://andrew-quinn.me/tmux-conf.txt
# curl -fsSL https://andrew-quinn.me/tmux-conf.txt -o ~/.tmux.conf
# busybox wget -q -O ~/.tmux.conf https://andrew-quinn.me/tmux-conf.txt
# [... many, many others]
The Windows PowerShell one is aspirational and manifesting. I should add some angel numbers to it to hyperstition more of what I want to see into the world.
> Probably the most common change among tmux users is to change the prefix from the rather awkward C-b to something that’s a little more accessible.
I like the awkwardness of the default prefix key. I have almost never activated it by accident.
> Intuitive Split Commands
> Another thing I personally find quite difficult to remember is the pane splitting commands." to split vertically and % to split horizontally just doesn’t work for my brain.
This is super intuitive to me. two ' in parallel means splitting horizontally. two ° split by an almost horizontal line means splitting vertically.
> Easy Config Reloads
I reloaded config over a few hundreds of times in my first week learning tmux a decade ago. I only reloaded config once in the last 5 years if I recall correctly. It's not something you should memorize.
> I like the awkwardness of the default prefix key.
I am 100% in agreement with you. It takes all of 5 seconds to add:
unbind-key -T prefix C-b
set-option -g prefix C-s
To your .tmux.conf on your local laptop (where I use tmux 99.99% of the time) - without worrying about conflicting on that once-in-one-year event where you start up tmux remotely.
I read "out of box" as meaning "has sensible defaults, can be used 'out of the box' without configuration".
I've never seen it used to mean "preinstalled on most systems". Although e.g. people like vi keybindings because vi is preinstalled on most systems.
Either way, I think you can argue for workstations, it's worth configuring software to your liking, and worth installing software that helps you be productive.
Though, the only software I've seen people excuse for having 'bad defaults' have been things like vim, emacs, tmux.
Though I also customize my tmux setup, the best way to use tmux is just to learn and remember the basics. Once you change the prefix bind or any other basic binds, you will have hard time on a new machine.
Btw, you can place tmux config at ~/.config/tmux/tmux.cong. No reason to clutter home dir.
My two favorite tmux QoL improvements are enabling seamless navigation between neovim and tmux (there are many plugins but i use this one https://github.com/aserowy/tmux.nvim) and extrakto which lets you fuzzy select anything in the tmux buffer and insert into the cursor or copy it to the clipboard. (https://github.com/laktak/extrakto)
The scrolling behavior in tmux has always annoyed me. Every time I have to press a shortcut to enter copy/scroll mode, and then exit it again. At the same time, using Ctrl+A to select all is always cumbersome.
In modern TUI editors, scrolling and select-all don’t seem to be issues at all. I can use them almost unconsciously in a way similar to GUI applications—for example, Micro or TUIs from OpenCode. Does anyone know how to solve these problems?
I use c-q for prefix key because it doesn’t conflict with common zsh and vim bindings.
Because the author suggested swapping caps lock and control key, I also recommend mapping escape key at the control key and change the behavior based on whether another key is pressed. For example, if you press control + a, it sends c-a, but if you only press control key and then release, it sends escape. It makes your vim life (and in general) a lot easier. You don’t have to compete the most variable real estate on the keyboard, right next to the A key.
For most bindings like moving, resizing, and splitting,I emulate vim bindings.
Also, -r flag for bind-key command is impotent, because it enables to repeat commands like changing the pane size or move focus. You don’t have to press prefix key each time.
If you want to get fancy look with minimal setting, use plugins like nord tmux theme.
One nice thing about tmux is it also supports include files in its config.
This lets you put your theme colors in a different file, such as `source-file "~/.config/tmux/theme.conf"` and then your theme switching external script or tool can symlink a specific theme's tmux file to that path.
That's what I do in my dotfiles:
# Main tmux config
https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/blob/master/.config/tmux/tmux.conf
# One of the theme files
https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/blob/master/themes/tokyonight-moon/tmux.conf
It allows for hot-reloading different themes as well.
Could never get mouse copy to work well (using mac at moment). When I make text selection, selects yellow and upon release goes to terminal prompt. I had one config work at one point and it kept selecting from all panes, not just one the one I'm in. Any ideas?
There’s many ways tmux could be used, but when it is part of IDE the most important usability tweaks that make tmux rock for me personally are:
— session configuration save/recall (with pane layout for each tab and directory for each pane[0]),
— nvim integration (for seamless split navigation and so that I can create or reattach to a tmux session in an nvim float, even though that nvim usually runs inside tmux),
— a bind to force-reload a pane if (when!) a command hangs.
For switching between tabs, I find that the ideal bind is simply Cmd + pane number. There’s never more than ten tabs that I’d often want to switch to within a single session. The highest number is probably four tabs. Each tab is typically assigned a high-level part of the project.
[0] I always forget what terminology a given multiplexer uses, so let’s just call them “panes” and “tabs”.
I gave up on Tmux due to issues w/reboot & session storage not working after.
I used the resurrect and continuum (one to save/restore, the other to save between sessions). Everytime I would reboot, the sessions no longer worked, and I'd have to delete the saved sessions.
Just trying to use Wezterms tabs panels like windows/panels. I don't do the SSH Session save/restore from remote so don't need that feature, and thus not too worried.
Big fan of all of the items mentioned here. I love the "intuitive split commands" -- I'll add that.
For the vim/nvim fans out there, I try my best to add "vim-style" key bindings for navigating between panes, so that e.g. ctrl-h, ctrl-j, ctrl-k, and ctrl-l can be used to move around qukcly. My dotfiles are here:
I stopped using tmux when I started using kitty terminal with native split windows. I prefer the native window management of kitty, but I do miss the session saving of tmux (e.g. if I accidentally close a tab).
I was going to say, but zellij doesn't connect the session to the GUI. However, I did not know about kitty's --use-foreground-process, which doesn't solve the problem completely but may be good enough.
One thing that often gets overlooked in the tmux vs. alternatives debate is that tmux's staying power is largely about ubiquity on remote servers. Zellij is great on your local machine where you control the environment, but if you're doing a lot of work via ssh on machines you don't own, tmux is almost certainly already installed. The muscle memory transfers too.
That said, I'd push back on the idea that the default tmux config is just "ugly". The real usability issue is that the keybindings are so divorced from how people intuitively think about splits and windows that even experienced users can't remember them. The visual defaults are just a symptom of the deeper problem that it was designed for someone who already had a mental model built around screen.
My main gripe with tmux is the nested use case (tmux session on my local machine, in which I ssh to another machine, only to tmux attach within the remote machine too). Is there a terminal multiplexer/session daemon that supports nested sessions out of the box with ease?
I wrote quite a bit of configuration to support an "outer" tmux process and "inner" tmux processes on all the remote hosts I have various and different tasks to accomplish. I am not sure how some software would manage these, but in the very least configuring my outer session to use Ctrl+a while the inner one uses Ctrl+b is working well. I have aliases that specify a socket so I can refer to the sessions easily and not get them confused.
I prefer to use tmux non-interactively. For example, I use it for running daemons in the foreground, (textmode) screen scraping and scripting text-only browser
I do almost all interactive work while detached from tmux (personal preference)
I also rely on tmux buffers for a textmode "clipboard". I do not use x11
I've been using tmux since 2011 well before it became popular. I only use a fraction of its features
I really really like tmux, probably i'll try Zellij at some point but its always my default on a new server to install tmux, copy oh my tmux and vimrc configs. then voila I have everything. I have to say I feel magical most of the time i'm using it
I would "just" do C-B PgUp and then use vi-like movement keys like hj, gg/G etc., and q to escape the pager, but I realize now that I say it that it doesn't sound very convenient or discoverable.
Did they fix being able to select text without a ton of empty spaces across multiple lines, and being able to use the mousewheel as effectively as a non-multiplexed terminal?
I don't get it. I don't want a 1970s teletype interface in 2026 just to have persistent command line sessions.
Where's the 2026 windowed version that feels exactly like a native terminal/iTerm/ghostty app but keeps sessions alive and lets me reconnect to them, no middle man with Ctrl keys for control.
I know this post will get a lot of hate responses. I don't care. Respond by fax
I’ve been using Ctrl-s for years. Nothing else uses it because it’s historically been used for terminal flow control, but that doesn’t really have much use in a graphical terminal with history and scrollbars and so I’ve never missed it. Has similar two-finger ergonomics to the Ctrl-a bind as well.
edit: oh, and I think Ctrl-space is the keystroke to get a nul character, and vi uses that character to insert the last entered piece of text in insert mode. It looks like Ctrl-@ does the same things, but tmux might not be able to tell the difference either.
Same, I used C-a for a while until I found out its default mapping is jumping to the beginning of the line so I rebound tmux prefix to C-Space. Now my only problem is on a few servers where I haven't copied my dotfiles.
I appreciate that tmux has theoretical advantages over screen, but man does the implementation suck. On Mac it still seems like there's no way to copy text if you have mouse mode on (at least in code-server).
Often, holding down "Shift" while making mouse selections will "break through" and let you get at the O.S. copy/paste/selection mechanism. Highly terminal dependent, though!
I haven't tried it, but it looks like it just calls pbcopy, which won't work in a browser. There's no programmatic way to do it, because tmux can't access the clipboard.
My experience is that Emacs wants to be your everything, and works best if you let it. Have you tried putting your terminals inside of Emacs instead of the other way around?
Tmux conflicted with my vim bindings and i tweaked the tmux.conf to fit my needs. It's worth playing around on pure tmux and figuring out what would work for you.
I'm constantly fighting with tmux copying. I want it to perform like native copying, but in mouse mode it seems to copy more characters than I want, copy newlines when I don't want them, and doesn't copy to clipboard in tmux-in-tmux situations.
i just have a little script called session (invoked as session namespace name and mapping to a tmux session called namespace/name and searching all namespaces if the namespace is elided) that just does the right tmux invocation for the various intersecting cases of [in or not in a tmux session already, target session does or does not exist] which also has the side benefit of leaving shell history breadcrumbs i can follow between sessions later if needed
I would also describe haventerminal.com as making tmux pretty and usable! but without any setup steps, first class support for agents, and management of multiple machines. Disclaimer: It's a macOS app we just launched and it ships its own open source session persistence.
Most modern terminals have a built-in multiplexing anyway. When you use tmux, you're essentially using a terminal emulator on top of a terminal emulator.
I've always written my code in vim and preferred CLIs in general, but I really want a GUI for the terminal itself, including tmux. iTerm2 makes it nice for example, even if it's only to use the meta/super key instead of the heavily overloaded control.
> Published on Aug 17, 2015
> Last updated on Oct 2, 2024
Why now?
At least some of the links in it don't mention plugins (which luckily some comments here do). Beside tmux-continuum and tmux-sensible, I'd recommend jaclu/tmux-menus.
my favorite thing to do with tmux is using a sessionizer script[0] (credit for the idea/original implementation goes to ThePrimeagen). allows for fzf-ing my projects and creating a separate session for each one. especially handy for bouncing around when working on features/fixes that span multiple repos
for (neo)vim users, flattening vim splits and tmux panes into the same level for switching with ctrl+hjkl is handy too
I'm perfectly happy with tmux the way it is, but upvoting this one because it's a decent overview of what to modify to make tmux more better if you don't like its defaults.
I love tmux but one thing which really annoys me is the fact that I cannot use the mouse wheel or the scroll back to see the previous content. I know there are shortcuts to go forward and back but I always forget them and they are not easily accessible on my keyboard and cumbersome.
I think the mouse wheel is mapped by default if you `set mouse on`? I also additionally map Shift-PageUp/Down in my config. And recently they added a `pane-scrollbars` option for a clickable ASCII scrollbar.
I almost never bother theming things on my computer; I usually don't really care about how things look and I can't be bothered with it.
I have two exceptions to this: NeoVim and tmux.
tmux in particular looks very ugly out of the box; I'm not sure why they decided to have a bright green bar on the bottom (presumably to be high-contrast in a low color terminal), but I really hate staring at it all day (since I kind of live in tmux most of the day on both my work and personal computer). I have it set as close as I can to the Wombat color scheme that's built into emacs (and which can be easily added to Vim), because I personally have always felt that that was the most pleasant theme to stare at for long periods of time.
Another thing I do is set the prefix key to backtick. I have no idea why I started doing this, but at this point I'm too geriatric to change, and I still greatly prefer this over ctrl-b. The only issue I've had is when I need to do code blocks in markdown, but I've just gotten used to hitting backtick twice when I need to actually use a backtick.
I've had the ctrl-a setup ever since migrating from screen to tmux, just due to muscle memory. But it is more conveniently located than ctrl-b - it's also rather nice if I have multiple nested layers of tmux due to temporary ones on other hosts. Sure you can just keep repeating the bind, but, just remembering that the second layer uses ctrl-b is a bit more convenient I feel. Slows me down a little, but usually I'm not using the 2nd layer as much.
I don't use capslock for ctrl though. It's much too useful as the Compose key ;)
I've used ` as prefix for years now. Considering how often you switch windows/panes, I reckon using a single character has saved me hours per year. :D
It rarely conflicts with whatever I'm doing, but I have a binding to temporarily switch it to `C-a` and back, which I almost never use.
Oh, and I've used this themepack[1] for years as well.
Actually, here's my config[2] if someone finds it useful. I can't claim ownership of it, and probably stole it from somewhere I don't remember anymore.
As a long time user of gnu screen (almost fifteen years now) i still have on my todo list to come up with a tmux config that mimics gnu screen… does somebody know if such a thing exists already?
Btw I don’t strictly believe in a gnu screen superiority, i’m just lazy.
That's a totally different thing. Native macOS app vs portable terminal multiplexer. My main use case for tmux is detaching and re-attaching to a session on a remote server, for which it's extremely useful.
That's what I tell people who keep telling me to try cmux. It's false advertising to say it's like tmux. No, Zellij, sure. But not this. I will hold onto tmux forever and you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
I gave up on it once I discovered https://zellij.dev/
Just even for how tab and panes are setup, and how it's good for scrolling and text selection with your mouse for copy pasting.
The only (deal breaker for me ) weakness of zellij - doesn't support copy/paste from the keyboard (from the screen/scrollback) and doesn't support multiple copy/paste buffers.
I do that roughly every 60-90 seconds with tmux - so, until the zellij developers relent (they suggest the "proper way" of copy paste is to pipe the data into a text editor and use that - but has the downside of not supporting system copy-paste buffers.) - no options other than to stick with tmux (or fork zellij - but that seems a bit much....)
Zellij has some controls for how copy/paste is handled. Perhops these could help you in the future? Link: https://zellij.dev/documentation/options.html#copy_command
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<button type="button" class="download-hover" onclick="location.href='https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/releases/latest/downloa...'"> linux download </button>
Screaming into the void, I guess, but PSA. Don't use buttons for links. In my case, I couldn't right-click and copy the URL, but there are a lot of other reasons not to do this.
It also breaks a lot of a11y tooling. It really helps a lot of people when developers care about semantic html.
I personally suggest web devs to install axe devtools [0] in their dev browser profile. Also, LLMs have gotten to the point that even the small local models can help a lot [1].
[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/axe-devtools/
[1]: Gemma 4: https://pastebin.com/Mjm1Vx4C
I have been using zmx for the last 2 weeks. It's still a bit buggy (screen repainting) but quite pleasant to use with ghostty.
https://github.com/neurosnap/zmx
Thanks for the report, I heard about it recently and was wondering how buggy it was since it's very new. I'll probably still try it soon.
Zellij still can't hide/show the status bar on the fly[1] and doesn't support windows preview in the windows list mode. Just these two (and many more) things are enough to stop me from migrating from tmux.
[1] https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/issues/694
You can't rebind plugin maps, so the session picker uses my preferred unlock chord to create a session. Dev had no interest in changing that.
I did the same, however, I recently switched back because zellij has just gotten too annoyingly bloated. I ended up on tmuxp to build my tmux session and autossh to keep me connected to my various ssh sessions and am much happier.
I have a few embedded devices where flash space is limited. tmux is so much smaller than zellij, and it's not even close.
Zellij is close to 50 megabytes, but tmux and all dependent libraries (minus libc, it's always there) is about 2 megabytes.
> Zellij is close to 50 megabytes,
That's a Rust thing. It's what happens when you statically link because you monomorphise everything.
100%. Tmux didn’t click for me but Zellij did within 5 minutes. Lifelong Vim user so it felt a lot more familiar.
Cool, I'm one of the lucky ten thousand today. Thanks.
Context: https://xkcd.com/1053/
Then, if you're like me and read this years ago, play around with the Light Mode dropdown which was new to me. :)
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Last time I tried zellij, a bunch of the default keybinds conflicted with default commands, or maybe vim commands, I can't remember. But the "solution" back then was constantly jumping in and out of "locked" mode, where no zellij keybindings except unlock work.
Didn't seem worth it, considering the giant footprint in comparison to tmux.
I tried zellij and it feels like its ui was designed by someone raised in the world of blade runner 2049
Just use byobu, zellij does weird things, byobu just uses tmux (or screen) and has a sane mouse TUI
I tried tmux so many times, could not commit the sequences to memory, but then zellij was just out of the gate, easy to "discover," and then I started writing plugins (rust wasm), and I even submitted a PR which got accepted to support background colors in panes/tabs.
I am a monthly donor, I think it has the right balance of community plus the lead dev has a vision, opinionated but open to inputs, and focused.
Once I discovered window managers and graphics, I stopped using half-baked features to emulate them in the terminal.
I use tmux to reattach to programs after the network connection dies, and not really anything else. I would welcome a version of it that stripped out everything but that, and just replayed the last few pages of scrollback on reattach.
I'm in the same boat and https://github.com/neurosnap/zmx has been working very well for me.
I use tmux for everything because I work in a headless VM where a WM isn't available.
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Unless I'm misreading this, I would also offer `mosh` as a recommendation. Has been nothing but excellent for my use cases.
> I would welcome a version of it that stripped out everything but that, and just replayed the last few pages of scrollback on reattach.
Like `dtach`?
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Check out shpool, whose tagline is "Think tmux, then aim... lower" :-)
https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool
window manager like what though?
Mac WM is horrible, I use aerospace to make it tolerable
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I used tmux for a few years, until one day I discovered Zellij. With its significantly better UI and overall user experience, I was instantly convinced.
This comment would be a lot more convincing if it weren't in response to one expressing the same sentiment :-)
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i tried both and i honestly... i didn't see anything different.
i want tmux for three things:
1. easy splits
2. easy scrollback
3. being able to restart a session if my terminal dies
given all that, tmux works exactly as expected.
what are all these "significantly better ui and overall ux"?
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Can you use zellij over ssh on a remote server?
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Same here. I bounced off it a few times because KDE konsole already had built in tab/pane support but once I picked up neovim the key chords for triggering actions just made so much sense compared to the static key binds of Console that I just started using Zellij for tabs and panes within Console.
This sentiment seems to be shared widely. Is there a good conversion guide for tmux users?
I tried zellij a couple of years ago when it first got popular and it didn't click for me.
https://zellij.dev/screencasts/
has some starting links, if screencasts do it for you
For me the only glitch was some key binding collision with ghostty/aerospace but it works perfectly out of the box on alacritty for me
Tried it when it came out on mac and it was super glitchy so I gave up. Also usally tmux is useful when I ssh
If anyone is looking for a slightly higher level management of persistent sessions, we just launched https://haventerminal.com for Mac
I prefer smux.dev
I left tmux for zellij after several unsuccessful attempts to get Shift+Enter working.
Was quite impressed initially and invested weeks in building new muscle memory, but somehow Zellij crashed with panic more than once, leaving all my processes orphaned. Decided to go back to tmux, and found a simple fix for my Shift+Enter issue.
In case anyone is looking for it, the fix is "bind-key -T root S-Enter send-keys C-j" borrowed from https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/6072.
> In case anyone is looking for it, the fix is "bind-key -T root S-Enter send-keys C-j"
I was looking, thank you!
Is it possible for a multiplexer process to die, but in such a bad way that its child processes continue to run?
I’ve been relying on the fact that in the worst-case scenario (if a pane hangs and tmux session becomes unresponsive) I can just kill tmux server and not have to hunt down and kill dozens of individual processes afterwards.
A `kill -9` will cause many a process to die and give no chance to cleanup any child processes. Some percentage of users continue to use `kill -9` by default, which may result in a mess of a process tree. Otherwise if the crash is bad enough that cleanup code cannot run (maybe it's being run on OpenBSD and an incompetent programmer didn't check the return value of a malloc and for some reason the kernel now nukes the process) then there may be orphan children. There may also be sporadic failures to cleanup if the crash, maybe, causes the whole process to exit before the cleanup code in some other thread can run. System load average may also influence how things maybe go sideways.
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Or if you want to avoid having to set new bindings, do '\ + enter' (which escapes the enter).
Interesting, for me `shift+enter` hasnt worked, but `option+enter` does give me new lines in Claude Code's promptbox inside tmux on MacOS.
Interesting. I’ve just been using ‘\ + enter’
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What does shift-enter do for you?
Maybe some keybind in a software. Another mentions Claude code, so it may be used to enter new line where enter is bound to send the prompt.
Terminal programs don’t see key events. It’s all text. I just checked st (suckless) code and the RETURN key will send “\r” aka carriage return. Control+j is “\n” or line feed.
Guys, did you know about tmux control mode? It tells the host terminal to treat tmux tabs as actual tabs in the terminal. That means that things like scrollback, tab navigation, copy paste, keyboard shortcuts, etc are all handled natively, and you can visually see all your tmux tabs! It doesn't have great support across all terminals, but it does work great in iTerm 2.
Try `tmux -CC` in iTerm.
For a tmux novice like me, this was a total game changer :)
this is the only reason i use a mac and in a decade no open source linux terminal has ever implemented this to my knowledge
I have in https://github.com/lmorg/ttyphoon
I actually don’t like control mode much though. It’s a terrible protocol. Absolutely abysmal design which leads to a plethora of edge case bugs.
At some point I’ll replace tmux control mode entirely but for the moment it solves the immediate problem.
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The control mode feature was implemented by the developer of iTerm2 for iTerm2: https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Control-Mode
Wezterm has some support for it on nightly.
so THAT's what -CC does...
Was about the mention this, -CC has been working perfectly for me
Holy carp.
For me, this is missing
To switch around quick. So on my system I've got Super-{1-9} for workspaces, Alt-{1-9} for tmux panes.
Also if you want a vi-like copy mode (where you can select and copy stuff) that opens using Alt-/:
And btw, Ctrl-Shift-v to paste system clipboard
You can also put the config into ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf
edit: And if you want a powerline-style design:
Requires powerline-fonts
I had my tmux customized to the point I forgot how to use it on a clean install which is a problem when I'm sshing into a server.
I wish it had better defaults but now I run it as is. After a while you get used to it. The only thing I always have to change is the mouse scroll and my brain cannot retain the exact command.
Do you have a "dot files" repo? It would contain things like this, config files for tmux, zsh, <other tools>, etc.
That may work for a server or two but doesn't really pan out for fleet management.
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Is it not just easier to accept the default config?
I think of this as the curse of Emacs. Infinitely configurable, thereafter entirely unique in the universe, which can be a double edged sword. See too (maybe it's the same thing) The Lisp Curse.[0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450973
I've hit this problem multiple times. The approach which finally eased this pain point for me was to take care to not overwrite any tmux defaults with my config, and only add non-conflicting configs (new shortcuts, styling changes, etc.) That way, if I need to use tmux on a new or unfamiliar machine, the core functionality is still present, and I just miss the candy that comes with customization.
For example, leave the existing prefix binding (ctrl-b), but also add something nicer for day-to-day use (ctrl-space or similar).
> I had my tmux customized to the point I forgot how to use it on a clean install which is a problem when I'm sshing into a server.
I had the same issue with gnu emacs… but at some point i lost my very custom configuration when the disk broke… i resorted to use a mostly-vanilla emacs :)
"Claude, scp my tmux config over to that box"
Why not just `scp ~/.tmux.conf remotehost:`?
I can't speak for the parent, but I rarely login to the same remote server twice and don't want to need to set things up and clean them up anytime I do. This is why I try to keep my stuff as close to vanilla as possible. If anything goes wrong on a server and someone sees I have a whole bunch of dot files to customize my config, it becomes a red herring that I have to spend time explaining away.
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Sometimes I ssh into a server as a specific user (e.g. as the "app" user that is used to run a web app), sometimes only root is available (probably not best practice, but it's not like I can or want to fix it myself).
In any case it's not practical to carry your dotfiles everywhere you go. Changes are also a hassle to propagate
Because I'm not the owner of the remote host.
I've been thoroughly impressed with tmux control mode[0] in iTerm2. This lets you manage remote terminal windows with your local window management provider. It is currently in the process of being implemented in ghostty[1] as well, can't wait!
[0] https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Control-Mode
[1] https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues/1935#issuecomm...
I love tmux! It's perfectly usable! You only need a 400-line custom-built configuration file[1]!
[1] https://doc.xn0.org/.tmux.conf
Disclaimer: I am being silly but serious. tmux is absolutely not user-friendly out of the box. It is, however, extremely nice after an absurd amount of tweaking, which is either an endorsement or a damning, depending on your perspective.
I dunno. I have yet to change any tmux settings, but I find it perfectly usable.
I guess it depends on what you want out of it. I’ve memorized about nine shortcuts, and that’ll all I’ve ever needed: ctrl+b and c, n, p, s, d, $, ‘,’, or PageUp/PageDown
I include lines at the top of my own https://andrew-quinn.me/tmux-conf.txt to make it easy to download no matter what kind of box I find myself on.
The Windows PowerShell one is aspirational and manifesting. I should add some angel numbers to it to hyperstition more of what I want to see into the world.
Mine is only a few lines copied from jcs’s one.
https://github.com/jcs/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf
I’ve only reverted the prefix binding back.
> Less awkward prefix keys
> Probably the most common change among tmux users is to change the prefix from the rather awkward C-b to something that’s a little more accessible.
I like the awkwardness of the default prefix key. I have almost never activated it by accident.
> Intuitive Split Commands
> Another thing I personally find quite difficult to remember is the pane splitting commands." to split vertically and % to split horizontally just doesn’t work for my brain.
This is super intuitive to me. two ' in parallel means splitting horizontally. two ° split by an almost horizontal line means splitting vertically.
> Easy Config Reloads
I reloaded config over a few hundreds of times in my first week learning tmux a decade ago. I only reloaded config once in the last 5 years if I recall correctly. It's not something you should memorize.
> I like the awkwardness of the default prefix key.
I am 100% in agreement with you. It takes all of 5 seconds to add:
To your .tmux.conf on your local laptop (where I use tmux 99.99% of the time) - without worrying about conflicting on that once-in-one-year event where you start up tmux remotely.
I read "tmux 2: mouse-free productivity" in a weekend years ago and it may be, pound-for-pound, one of the more impactful books on my productivity.
Seems like they are keeping up-to-date too: https://bookshop.org/p/books/tmux-3-productive-mouse-free-de...
The book doesn't mention the author of tmux or its origins even once :(
I believe that book would be called: "History of Tmux"
Thanks for the reference.
If you're interested in an out of the box multiplexer. https://zellij.dev/ is great. I've been using it for about a year now and loving it.
Your out of the box isn't my out of the box. Tmux is in main on OpenBSD, where it started.
I read "out of box" as meaning "has sensible defaults, can be used 'out of the box' without configuration".
I've never seen it used to mean "preinstalled on most systems". Although e.g. people like vi keybindings because vi is preinstalled on most systems.
Either way, I think you can argue for workstations, it's worth configuring software to your liking, and worth installing software that helps you be productive.
Though, the only software I've seen people excuse for having 'bad defaults' have been things like vim, emacs, tmux.
I like having a red bar for tmux running as root and a blue one for running it as a normal user, e.g. for root:
I also like to have the bar on top and the status centered:
Do you use this when running tmux remotely?
(I only run it in my own machines so it never runs as root anyway)
I change the color of the bar in every server I've set it up so I know absolutely where I am.
Aren't you going to run out of colors to pick?
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Though I also customize my tmux setup, the best way to use tmux is just to learn and remember the basics. Once you change the prefix bind or any other basic binds, you will have hard time on a new machine.
Btw, you can place tmux config at ~/.config/tmux/tmux.cong. No reason to clutter home dir.
I highly recommend just turning the mouse on, it's amazing for resizing panels and the rightclick menu is nice.
for multi-monitor setups
is also really nice.
Honestly, this is the only configuration I need.
Wish they could make this default, not sure why they haven't.
xterm, probably
a lot of servers use tmux which probably has some weird broken edge cases
My two favorite tmux QoL improvements are enabling seamless navigation between neovim and tmux (there are many plugins but i use this one https://github.com/aserowy/tmux.nvim) and extrakto which lets you fuzzy select anything in the tmux buffer and insert into the cursor or copy it to the clipboard. (https://github.com/laktak/extrakto)
The scrolling behavior in tmux has always annoyed me. Every time I have to press a shortcut to enter copy/scroll mode, and then exit it again. At the same time, using Ctrl+A to select all is always cumbersome.
In modern TUI editors, scrolling and select-all don’t seem to be issues at all. I can use them almost unconsciously in a way similar to GUI applications—for example, Micro or TUIs from OpenCode. Does anyone know how to solve these problems?
I use c-q for prefix key because it doesn’t conflict with common zsh and vim bindings.
Because the author suggested swapping caps lock and control key, I also recommend mapping escape key at the control key and change the behavior based on whether another key is pressed. For example, if you press control + a, it sends c-a, but if you only press control key and then release, it sends escape. It makes your vim life (and in general) a lot easier. You don’t have to compete the most variable real estate on the keyboard, right next to the A key.
For most bindings like moving, resizing, and splitting,I emulate vim bindings.
Also, -r flag for bind-key command is impotent, because it enables to repeat commands like changing the pane size or move focus. You don’t have to press prefix key each time.
If you want to get fancy look with minimal setting, use plugins like nord tmux theme.
One nice thing about tmux is it also supports include files in its config.
This lets you put your theme colors in a different file, such as `source-file "~/.config/tmux/theme.conf"` and then your theme switching external script or tool can symlink a specific theme's tmux file to that path.
That's what I do in my dotfiles:
It allows for hot-reloading different themes as well.
Could never get mouse copy to work well (using mac at moment). When I make text selection, selects yellow and upon release goes to terminal prompt. I had one config work at one point and it kept selecting from all panes, not just one the one I'm in. Any ideas?
This is also why i gave up on it. Don't want to install iTerm either, more blaot.
Try iterm2 which has mouse reporting
There’s many ways tmux could be used, but when it is part of IDE the most important usability tweaks that make tmux rock for me personally are:
— session configuration save/recall (with pane layout for each tab and directory for each pane[0]),
— nvim integration (for seamless split navigation and so that I can create or reattach to a tmux session in an nvim float, even though that nvim usually runs inside tmux),
— a bind to force-reload a pane if (when!) a command hangs.
For switching between tabs, I find that the ideal bind is simply Cmd + pane number. There’s never more than ten tabs that I’d often want to switch to within a single session. The highest number is probably four tabs. Each tab is typically assigned a high-level part of the project.
[0] I always forget what terminology a given multiplexer uses, so let’s just call them “panes” and “tabs”.
I gave up on Tmux due to issues w/reboot & session storage not working after.
I used the resurrect and continuum (one to save/restore, the other to save between sessions). Everytime I would reboot, the sessions no longer worked, and I'd have to delete the saved sessions.
Just trying to use Wezterms tabs panels like windows/panels. I don't do the SSH Session save/restore from remote so don't need that feature, and thus not too worried.
Big fan of all of the items mentioned here. I love the "intuitive split commands" -- I'll add that.
For the vim/nvim fans out there, I try my best to add "vim-style" key bindings for navigating between panes, so that e.g. ctrl-h, ctrl-j, ctrl-k, and ctrl-l can be used to move around qukcly. My dotfiles are here:
https://github.com/jay-khatri/dotfiles/blob/main/.tmux.conf
Hard agree on intuitive splits, I do this as well.
My hotkey is the backtick, `, rather than a chord.
The one thing I still struggle with - because it happens rarely - is easily copying the contents, full or partial, of a particular pane.
I stopped using tmux when I started using kitty terminal with native split windows. I prefer the native window management of kitty, but I do miss the session saving of tmux (e.g. if I accidentally close a tab).
Check out: https://github.com/neurosnap/zmx
It uses libghostty to restore scrollback history and terminal state.
but I do miss the session saving of tmux
Interesting...I kinda thought that was 90% of the use case for using tmux.
There are many separate session persistence daemons: dtach, zmx, hauntty, shpool, diss, abduco - take your pick
screen's another nice one. been using it for 25 years, so far so good
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Recent versions of Kitty have sessions. https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/sessions/
I was going to say, but zellij doesn't connect the session to the GUI. However, I did not know about kitty's --use-foreground-process, which doesn't solve the problem completely but may be good enough.
https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/sessions/#more-complex-sessi...
One thing that often gets overlooked in the tmux vs. alternatives debate is that tmux's staying power is largely about ubiquity on remote servers. Zellij is great on your local machine where you control the environment, but if you're doing a lot of work via ssh on machines you don't own, tmux is almost certainly already installed. The muscle memory transfers too.
That said, I'd push back on the idea that the default tmux config is just "ugly". The real usability issue is that the keybindings are so divorced from how people intuitively think about splits and windows that even experienced users can't remember them. The visual defaults are just a symptom of the deeper problem that it was designed for someone who already had a mental model built around screen.
I prefer to hide the status bar entirely, and use an fzf-powered named window switcher to navigate between windows.
https://github.com/cmpadden/dotfiles/blob/6e767691a6b1295260...
My main gripe with tmux is the nested use case (tmux session on my local machine, in which I ssh to another machine, only to tmux attach within the remote machine too). Is there a terminal multiplexer/session daemon that supports nested sessions out of the box with ease?
I wrote quite a bit of configuration to support an "outer" tmux process and "inner" tmux processes on all the remote hosts I have various and different tasks to accomplish. I am not sure how some software would manage these, but in the very least configuring my outer session to use Ctrl+a while the inner one uses Ctrl+b is working well. I have aliases that specify a socket so I can refer to the sessions easily and not get them confused.
I prefer to use tmux non-interactively. For example, I use it for running daemons in the foreground, (textmode) screen scraping and scripting text-only browser
I do almost all interactive work while detached from tmux (personal preference)
I also rely on tmux buffers for a textmode "clipboard". I do not use x11
I've been using tmux since 2011 well before it became popular. I only use a fraction of its features
> I do almost all interactive work while detached from tmux
How come?
I really really like tmux, probably i'll try Zellij at some point but its always my default on a new server to install tmux, copy oh my tmux and vimrc configs. then voila I have everything. I have to say I feel magical most of the time i'm using it
The only reason I don't use tmux is because of how annoying it is to look at scrollback. Am I using it wrong?
I would "just" do C-B PgUp and then use vi-like movement keys like hj, gg/G etc., and q to escape the pager, but I realize now that I say it that it doesn't sound very convenient or discoverable.
C-b [ allows you to scroll up/down
Did they fix being able to select text without a ton of empty spaces across multiple lines, and being able to use the mousewheel as effectively as a non-multiplexed terminal?
I don't get it. I don't want a 1970s teletype interface in 2026 just to have persistent command line sessions.
Where's the 2026 windowed version that feels exactly like a native terminal/iTerm/ghostty app but keeps sessions alive and lets me reconnect to them, no middle man with Ctrl keys for control.
I know this post will get a lot of hate responses. I don't care. Respond by fax
Ctrl-a interferes with readline shortcuts. I've been using Ctrl-<Space>: nothing, as far as I know, binds to that.
I very recently learned that with most readline apps and terminal password inputs, ctrl+u clears the input.
Very handy when you make a typo far into a long password and can't keep track of whether you've mashed backspace enough.
I’ve been using Ctrl-s for years. Nothing else uses it because it’s historically been used for terminal flow control, but that doesn’t really have much use in a graphical terminal with history and scrollbars and so I’ve never missed it. Has similar two-finger ergonomics to the Ctrl-a bind as well.
edit: oh, and I think Ctrl-space is the keystroke to get a nul character, and vi uses that character to insert the last entered piece of text in insert mode. It looks like Ctrl-@ does the same things, but tmux might not be able to tell the difference either.
Same, I used C-a for a while until I found out its default mapping is jumping to the beginning of the line so I rebound tmux prefix to C-Space. Now my only problem is on a few servers where I haven't copied my dotfiles.
I appreciate that tmux has theoretical advantages over screen, but man does the implementation suck. On Mac it still seems like there's no way to copy text if you have mouse mode on (at least in code-server).
Select copies, what do you mean?
Not for me. Some kind of OSC 52 problem.
Yeah, that really sucks. I couldn’t quite believe what was the case and spent many hours trying to debug it.
Often, holding down "Shift" while making mouse selections will "break through" and let you get at the O.S. copy/paste/selection mechanism. Highly terminal dependent, though!
Not in browsers, unfortunately. Both my work and Home Assistant OS use tmux in a browser tty, and I have to turn off mouse mode to copy.
Maybe you could try this - https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-yank
I haven't tried it, but it looks like it just calls pbcopy, which won't work in a browser. There's no programmatic way to do it, because tmux can't access the clipboard.
I was wondering about tmux vs screen (+splitvt) but didn’t want to ask. What are the advantages?
What I don't see discussed is why tmux (and screen) are still a thing, when we have windowed desktops for 40+ years now.
Disconnecting a session's lifetime from the connection's lifetime hardly need such lengthy tutorial.
And displaying and arranging multiple virtual terminals was supposed to be the job of the terminal emulator and the windowing system.
I like to have an IBM 3270 style status bar on the bottom.
Any guides for tmux configuration that works well with Emacs? The use of Ctrl and Meta for basic operations conflicts with a lot of Emacs commands.
My experience is that Emacs wants to be your everything, and works best if you let it. Have you tried putting your terminals inside of Emacs instead of the other way around?
* If you need a "real" terminal emulator, you can use something like vterm (https://github.com/akermu/emacs-libvterm/).
* If you need to be able to attach/detach Emacs sessions on remote machines, you can use something like dtach or abducto (https://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco/).
Tmux conflicted with my vim bindings and i tweaked the tmux.conf to fit my needs. It's worth playing around on pure tmux and figuring out what would work for you.
I'm constantly fighting with tmux copying. I want it to perform like native copying, but in mouse mode it seems to copy more characters than I want, copy newlines when I don't want them, and doesn't copy to clipboard in tmux-in-tmux situations.
You can use vi copy mode. It makes selection a lot easier.
I would love to have a way to switch sessions easily, like with panes where I just click or have more shortcuts available
i just have a little script called session (invoked as session namespace name and mapping to a tmux session called namespace/name and searching all namespaces if the namespace is elided) that just does the right tmux invocation for the various intersecting cases of [in or not in a tmux session already, target session does or does not exist] which also has the side benefit of leaving shell history breadcrumbs i can follow between sessions later if needed
I use byobu for managing tmux windows and sessions https://www.byobu.org/
People have developed plugins for this. Check out “sesh” for instance.
Switching between sessions with fuzzy finding, and creating new ones when needed, is a wonderful feature.
Check out the `choose-tree` and `display-menu` commands.
Prefix-w works, or did you want something more?
I don't see what's awkward about C-b and %.
No mention of replacing the weird-ass emacs thing on [ with proper vim bindings?
One way to make tmux way more usable is to use tmux-fingers, which provides hint-based mouse-free copypaste capabilities
https://github.com/morantron/tmux-fingers
(disclaimer: I'm the developer of the plugin)
I would also describe haventerminal.com as making tmux pretty and usable! but without any setup steps, first class support for agents, and management of multiple machines. Disclaimer: It's a macOS app we just launched and it ships its own open source session persistence.
I used tmux for quite some time, and just stopped using it one day. I realized that whatever tmux brings can be done better by a good terminal.
I also hated dealing with all the wrong colors, escape character support, missing chars and messed up terminal buffers
Wezterm for examples has panes in addition of tabs and scriptable enough (lua) that you can session management:
https://fredrikaverpil.github.io/blog/2024/10/20/session-man...
Most modern terminals have a built-in multiplexing anyway. When you use tmux, you're essentially using a terminal emulator on top of a terminal emulator.
At some point I switched to "oh my tmux" which seems to cover most of the customisations I needed https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux
I've always written my code in vim and preferred CLIs in general, but I really want a GUI for the terminal itself, including tmux. iTerm2 makes it nice for example, even if it's only to use the meta/super key instead of the heavily overloaded control.
> Published on Aug 17, 2015 > Last updated on Oct 2, 2024
Why now?
At least some of the links in it don't mention plugins (which luckily some comments here do). Beside tmux-continuum and tmux-sensible, I'd recommend jaclu/tmux-menus.
my favorite thing to do with tmux is using a sessionizer script[0] (credit for the idea/original implementation goes to ThePrimeagen). allows for fzf-ing my projects and creating a separate session for each one. especially handy for bouncing around when working on features/fixes that span multiple repos
for (neo)vim users, flattening vim splits and tmux panes into the same level for switching with ctrl+hjkl is handy too
[0](https://github.com/tolly-xyz/dotfiles/blob/main/.local%2Fbin...)
I'm perfectly happy with tmux the way it is, but upvoting this one because it's a decent overview of what to modify to make tmux more better if you don't like its defaults.
I love tmux but one thing which really annoys me is the fact that I cannot use the mouse wheel or the scroll back to see the previous content. I know there are shortcuts to go forward and back but I always forget them and they are not easily accessible on my keyboard and cumbersome.
I think the mouse wheel is mapped by default if you `set mouse on`? I also additionally map Shift-PageUp/Down in my config. And recently they added a `pane-scrollbars` option for a clickable ASCII scrollbar.
Thanks! I works. I modified my ~/.tmux.conf file to be like this:
# Activate mouse mode
set -g mouse on
# Enter copy mode and scroll up with PageUp
bind-key -n Pageup copy-mode -u
# Scroll down with PageDown; if at the bottom, it will exit copy mode automatically
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi Pagedown send-keys -X page-down
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi Pageup send-keys -X page-up
Another easy to use option is using byobu (https://github.com/dustinkirkland/byobu).
I have been using byobu for almost a decade now and it never let me down.
I almost never bother theming things on my computer; I usually don't really care about how things look and I can't be bothered with it.
I have two exceptions to this: NeoVim and tmux.
tmux in particular looks very ugly out of the box; I'm not sure why they decided to have a bright green bar on the bottom (presumably to be high-contrast in a low color terminal), but I really hate staring at it all day (since I kind of live in tmux most of the day on both my work and personal computer). I have it set as close as I can to the Wombat color scheme that's built into emacs (and which can be easily added to Vim), because I personally have always felt that that was the most pleasant theme to stare at for long periods of time.
Another thing I do is set the prefix key to backtick. I have no idea why I started doing this, but at this point I'm too geriatric to change, and I still greatly prefer this over ctrl-b. The only issue I've had is when I need to do code blocks in markdown, but I've just gotten used to hitting backtick twice when I need to actually use a backtick.
feels wrong to scp a dotfile to a server you only touch once
Worth mentioning my tmux llm chat helper sidechat: https://github.com/day50-dev/sidechat
I use it every day.
i used to use tmux a lot when i used to develop on arch, since i moved to macos i never installed it.
tbh i even forgot what it used to buy me.
set-option -g prefix C-x
has been working for me for years
I've had the ctrl-a setup ever since migrating from screen to tmux, just due to muscle memory. But it is more conveniently located than ctrl-b - it's also rather nice if I have multiple nested layers of tmux due to temporary ones on other hosts. Sure you can just keep repeating the bind, but, just remembering that the second layer uses ctrl-b is a bit more convenient I feel. Slows me down a little, but usually I'm not using the 2nd layer as much.
I don't use capslock for ctrl though. It's much too useful as the Compose key ;)
the most tmux thing in the world is that "make tmux usable" is still a genre.
I've used ` as prefix for years now. Considering how often you switch windows/panes, I reckon using a single character has saved me hours per year. :D
It rarely conflicts with whatever I'm doing, but I have a binding to temporarily switch it to `C-a` and back, which I almost never use.
Oh, and I've used this themepack[1] for years as well.
Actually, here's my config[2] if someone finds it useful. I can't claim ownership of it, and probably stole it from somewhere I don't remember anymore.
BTW, the author's site https://rootloops.sh/ is certainly... something. :)
[1]: https://github.com/jimeh/tmux-themepack
[2]: https://gist.github.com/imiric/9bd3e5b7fc5e1468d05abc674f42e...
Just use smux.dev
I remember running ssh to connect to a mainframe and starting gnu screen remotely right after watching the matrix. And I've used it ever since.
All these newage tmux hippie yuppies can get off my lawn.
As a long time user of gnu screen (almost fifteen years now) i still have on my todo list to come up with a tmux config that mimics gnu screen… does somebody know if such a thing exists already?
Btw I don’t strictly believe in a gnu screen superiority, i’m just lazy.
Try https://github.com/ddollar/tmux/blob/master/examples/screen-...
nice update on tmux
I ended up AI-slopcoding myself a small shell script for the few things I need from tmux: https://gist.github.com/dmitriid/523a5229c9a17a1cf4ad9182f4c...
I just couldn't be bothered to remember all the prefixed commands :)
that's pretty nice, but did you try cmux.com
That's a totally different thing. Native macOS app vs portable terminal multiplexer. My main use case for tmux is detaching and re-attaching to a session on a remote server, for which it's extremely useful.
I've been building a tmux wrapper that is similar you might be interested in. https://jmux.build
That's what I tell people who keep telling me to try cmux. It's false advertising to say it's like tmux. No, Zellij, sure. But not this. I will hold onto tmux forever and you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
what does it add over screen which i don't even need to install?
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hm, seems i misunderstood something
OP doesn't seem to be on Mac
Even if they are, cmux isn't an alternative to tmux, as it can't attach to/detach from sessions, which is usually the whole reason to use tmux.
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I actually asked chatgpt to recommend me a great starter tmux conf, and it gave me 80% of this blog post. Not an insult btw.