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 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.
It is actually true though, I only use tmux nowadays when I am SSHed into a server that I need to do some work on.
The only issues I've had with it is that sometimes it's hot keys conflict with vim, but you can easily turn it temporarily off with ctrl+ g.
If you're already used to tmux I'm not sure you would benefit much from changing, but it definitely has a better out of the box with pane hints, names, and more user friendly hot keys.
Maybe give terminal windows in vim a try? vim is not a terminal multiplexer, but if all you need is multiple terminals windows:
:term to open a terminal in a new vim window (or :vert term)
Standard window movements apply (by default the window prefix is Ctrl-W), most important are: Ctrl-W,{hjkl} to switch between windows, Ctrl-W,{<>+-} to resize windows, Ctrl-W,{HJKL} to move windows to edges, Ctrl-W,{qc} to (force) close windows
Enter normal mode of a terminal buffer with Ctrl-W,N: now you can perform vim motions and scroll the output
Enter insert mode with i and you can type into the terminal again
In insert mode: Ctrl-W "x to paste register x, Ctrl-W . to send a literal Ctrl-W. If too annoying, you can change the window prefix of vim
This goes for vim, neovim also has a terminal mode but it works differently I think
I'm unclear what's being asked. Zellij is just a TUI-based terminal multiplexer like tmux and screen, you either run it locally and SSH within it to a remote machine, or SSH to a remote machine and run Zellij from within the remote connection.
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.
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 :)
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'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
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.
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'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!
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”.
> 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.
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
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)
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.
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 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 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 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.
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
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'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.
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 used screen until like 2010 or so -- but you triggered me to look back at it again today. One nicety there now is that you can easily get a dump of what's showing in the pty with screen -S <session_name> -X hardcopy. This is actually somewhat hard to do in tmux, but it's a thing you want your AI agents to do all the time. I'm curious if claude / codex are comfortable with screen, I'll check it out.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 ;)
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.
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
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. :)
> play around with the Light Mode dropdown which was new to me. :)
It's this year's April Fools' joke: https://xkcd.com/3227/ :P
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 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 :-)
It is actually true though, I only use tmux nowadays when I am SSHed into a server that I need to do some work on.
The only issues I've had with it is that sometimes it's hot keys conflict with vim, but you can easily turn it temporarily off with ctrl+ g.
If you're already used to tmux I'm not sure you would benefit much from changing, but it definitely has a better out of the box with pane hints, names, and more user friendly hot keys.
Maybe give terminal windows in vim a try? vim is not a terminal multiplexer, but if all you need is multiple terminals windows:
:term to open a terminal in a new vim window (or :vert term)
Standard window movements apply (by default the window prefix is Ctrl-W), most important are: Ctrl-W,{hjkl} to switch between windows, Ctrl-W,{<>+-} to resize windows, Ctrl-W,{HJKL} to move windows to edges, Ctrl-W,{qc} to (force) close windows
Enter normal mode of a terminal buffer with Ctrl-W,N: now you can perform vim motions and scroll the output
Enter insert mode with i and you can type into the terminal again
In insert mode: Ctrl-W "x to paste register x, Ctrl-W . to send a literal Ctrl-W. If too annoying, you can change the window prefix of vim
This goes for vim, neovim also has a terminal mode but it works differently I think
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"?
Can you use zellij over ssh on a remote server?
Yes you can!
without running zellij on the remote machine? how?
I'm unclear what's being asked. Zellij is just a TUI-based terminal multiplexer like tmux and screen, you either run it locally and SSH within it to a remote machine, or SSH to a remote machine and run Zellij from within the remote connection.
I guess they mean 'have zellij hold your session when you log off/close controlling terminal'. (that would require zellij on remote)
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.
Interesting, for me `shift+enter` hasnt worked, but `option+enter` does give me new lines in Claude Code's promptbox inside tmux on MacOS.
> 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.
That depends on how the children were spawned, no? prctl(PR_SET_PDEATHSIG, SIGTERM); or similar will fix this.
TIL. I didn’t know it’s the responsibility of the parent, thought OS automatically handles child processes.
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
Holy carp.
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'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).
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.
Is it not just easier to accept the default config?
"Claude, scp my tmux config over to that box"
> 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 :)
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.
If only we had ways to automate repeating processes… oh well
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
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.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
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'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 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...
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.
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?
Try iterm2 which has mouse reporting
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
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...
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 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: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?
> 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.
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?
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)
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 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.
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.
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 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 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 was wondering about tmux vs screen (+splitvt) but didn’t want to ask. What are the advantages?
Select copies, what do you mean?
Not for me. Some kind of OSC 52 problem.
Maybe you could try this - https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-yank
Yeah, that really sucks. I couldn’t quite believe what was the case and spent many hours trying to debug it.
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)
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
I like to have an IBM 3270 style status bar on the bottom.
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 would love to have a way to switch sessions easily, like with panes where I just click or have more shortcuts available
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.
Prefix-w works, or did you want something more?
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'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.
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).
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
I used screen until like 2010 or so -- but you triggered me to look back at it again today. One nicety there now is that you can easily get a dump of what's showing in the pty with screen -S <session_name> -X hardcopy. This is actually somewhat hard to do in tmux, but it's a thing you want your AI agents to do all the time. I'm curious if claude / codex are comfortable with screen, I'll check it out.
Recent versions of Kitty have sessions. https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/sessions/
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 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've been told more than once it's life-changing. I certainly use it every day.
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.
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...
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.
the most tmux thing in the world is that "make tmux usable" is still a genre.
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 ;)
Just use smux.dev
nice update on tmux
I ended up AI-slopcoding myself a small shell script for the few things I need from tmix: 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
what does it add over screen which i don't even need to install?
cmux? I don't know and it's not even a good comparison.
tmux? https://www.google.com/search?q=tmux+vs+screen
If screen crashes you lose the sessions, Tmux maintains state.
Screen does not have UTF8 support, tmux does.
Otherwise just a bunch of more sane original defaults in tmux to make things much familiar.
In 2026 if given a choice between screen and tmux to use/learn, most are going to go with tmux.
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.
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.
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.