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Blynt

tmux - boosting your terminal experience

/ 4 min read

Even though I generally expect apps to have sensible defaults and thus restrain from playing too much with their configuration, there is one setting I always update when I open a new terminal emulator. That is which command to run when it starts. I always pick tmux.

Many terminal emulators support opening shells in tabs and splitting windows into horizontal or vertical panels. This is functionality that’s entirely redundant because that’s one of the core features of tmux.

With tmux I can bring that functionality with me regardless of which app I use to access the shell with no need to learn new keyboard shortcuts when I borrow a friend’s esoteric Windows machine to ssh to my Linux box.

But tmux is more than just that. It also allows me to detach from a session and resume it later. This is a feature that I use all the time. At home I have my workstation running all the time with a bunch of tmux sessions open (remember, the only setting I change).

So when I’m out and about and using my laptop, I can just ssh back home and type tmux, hit Ctrl-b w to scroll through all my tmux windows and dig up that old vim session I was working in. Magic!

Three panels in a tmux window.

Installation

On Debian-based systems, installing tmux is as simple as:

Terminal window
sudo apt install tmux

The man page will of course provide you with everything you need to know about tmux, but here is the list of commands I use the most:

When not in tmux

  • tmux - start a new session
  • tmux ls - list all sessions
  • tmux a -t <session> - attach to a running session

When in tmux

When you’re inside tmux, you can interact with it by using the Ctrl-b prefix and then issue a command. Here are the ones I use the most:

Full-screen windows

  • Ctrl-b c - create a new full-screen window
  • Ctrl-b <number> - move to window <number>

Window management in tmux.

Splitting windows into panes

  • Ctrl-b % - split the window vertically
  • Ctrl-b " - split the window horizontally
  • Ctrl-b q - show pane numbers (then hit the number to move to that pane)
  • Ctrl-b z - zoom pane to full-screen (hit Ctrl-b z again to zoom back)
  • Ctrl-b x - kill the current pane (e.g if some app is stuck)
  • Ctrl-b Ctrl-arrow keys - resize the pane
  • Ctrl-b ! - move the current pane into a new window

Managing panes in tmux.

Switching between sessions

  • Ctrl-b s - list sessions
  • Ctrl-b w - choose a session from a list (with all windows)
    • Use arrow keys to navigate (or j and k)
    • Use / to search for a window
  • Ctrl-b d - detach from the current session (and leave it running)

Listing sessions + listing windows and finally jumping to ncspot.

Finding and copying text

  • Ctrl-b [ - enter copy mode
    • Use arrow keys to navigate (or j and k)
    • Use Space to start selecting text
    • Use Enter to copy the selected text
  • Ctrl-b ] - paste the copied text

Copying text from one pane to a vim session running in another.

Miscellaneous

  • Ctrl-b t - show the time
  • Ctrl-b ? - show all key bindings (saves the day!)

Configuration

Even though I started this post by saying that I don’t like to fiddle with the settings of my apps, I have set some config options to boost my tmux experience.

Essentially what I do is the following:

  • I turn on mouse support:
    • I.e. I can scroll in windows and switch windows / panes with the mouse.
  • Whenever I copy text (as described above), tmux also runs it through xsel so that I can paste it with Ctrl-v in any graphical app (you can update this to whatever clipboard manager you use).
  • I turn on vi key bindings for scrolling, etc.
  • I install a few plugins through the tpm plugin manager:
    • tmux-sensible just provides some sensible defaults.
    • dracula is the color scheme you see in all screenshots.
    • tmux-powerline adds a status line at the bottom of the screen.

Here is my full ~/.tmux.conf:

Terminal window
set -g mouse on
set -s copy-command 'xsel -b'
set -g mode-keys vi
set -g pane-border-status top
set -g pane-border-format "#{pane_index}: #{pane_current_command}"
set -g default-shell /bin/bash


# List of plugins
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tpm'
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible'
set -g @plugin 'dracula/tmux'


set -g @plugin 'erikw/tmux-powerline'


# Fix true colors
set-option -sa terminal-overrides ',XXX:RGB'


# Capture the pane title and set it to the window title
set -g set-titles on
set -g set-titles-string '#I:#P: #{pane_current_command}'


set -g default-shell /usr/bin/bash


# Initialize TMUX plugin manager (keep this line at the very bottom)
run '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm'

If you haven’t already, make sure to give tmux a try!