tmux

Updated at 2018-06-28 20:12

tmux is a terminal multiplexer that allows easily running multiple applications in the same terminal and keeping everything as a detached process.

What I do is I simply have tmux starting command in .bashrc. This has added benefit that most IDEs that offer terminals will also start tmux automatically.

# automagical tmux if not already in a tmux session
if command -v tmux &> /dev/null && [ -z "$TMUX" ]; then
    tmux attach-session -t default || tmux new-session -s default
fi

tmux is especially useful when connecting to remote hosts and want to keep tabs.

You start, attach to and detach from tmux sessions. A single machine can have many tmux sessions running.

Sessions            (current session shown bottom left in [brackets])
    > Windows       (windows are shown in bottom bar, current marked with *)
        > Panes     (tiled sections of a window, active highlighted with green borders)

I use 100% vanilla tmux keybindigs for easier cross-system usage.

Tab keybindings:

tmux Start default tmux session.
ctrl+b, c Create a new window with a single pane.
ctrl+b, 0-9 Jump to a specific window.
ctrl+b, " Split pane horizontally.
ctrl+b, % Split pane vertically.
ctrl+b, arrows Select another pane.
ctrl+b, ctrl+arrows Resize selected pane.
ctrl+b, z Maximize/normalize selected pane.
ctrl+b, ! Move current pane to a new dedicated window.
ctrl+b, x Close the current window.

Session keybindings:

ctrl+d End of Transmission -signal like normal, closes active pane.
ctrl+b, d Detach from the session, leaving it running in the background.
tmux a Attach back to detached tmux session

Browsing keybindings:

ctrl+b, [ Enter copy mode for copy-paste, browsing and such.
ctrl+b, [, ctrl+s Search in terminal, n for next, N for previous.
ctrl+b, [, arrows, ctrl+space, arrows, alt+w Copy to tmux clipboard.
ctrl+b, ] Paste from tmux clipboard.