tmux - ArchWiki [Link]

org/title/Tmux

tmux
tmux ([Link] is a "terminal multiplexer: it enables a number of terminals
(or windows), each running a separate program, to be created, accessed, and controlled from a
single screen. tmux may be detached from a screen and continue running in the background, then
later reattached."

tmux is an ISC-licensed alternative to GNU Screen. Although similar, there are many differences
between the programs, as noted on the tmux FAQ page ([Link]
ki/FAQ).

1 Installation
Install the tmux ([Link] package.

2 Configuration
By default, tmux looks for user-specific configuration at
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tmux/[Link] followed by ~/.config/tmux/[Link] , as of
3.2 ([Link]
a3f2/CHANGES#L145). A global configuration file may be provided at /etc/[Link]
though by default Arch does not ship such a file.

2.1 Key bindings

By default, command key bindings are prefixed by Ctrl+b . For example, to vertically split a
window type Ctrl+b % .

After splitting a window into multiple panes, a pane can be resized by the hitting prefix key (e.g.
Ctrl+b ) and, while continuing to hold Ctrl , press Left / Right / Up / Down . Swapping
panes is achieved in the same manner, but by hitting o instead of a directional key.

Key bindings may be changed with the bind and unbind commands in [Link] . For example,
the default prefix binding of Ctrl+b can be changed to Ctrl+a by adding the following
commands in your configuration file:

unbind C-b
set -g prefix C-a
bind C-a send-prefix

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Tip

Quote special characters to use them as prefix. You may also use Alt (called Meta) instead of
Ctrl . For example: set -g prefix m-'\'

To create a new window you can use Ctrl+b c and move forward one window with Ctrl+b n
and backwards one window with Ctrl+b p .

Additional ways to move between windows include the following:

Ctrl+b l (Move to the previously selected window)

Ctrl+b w (List all windows / window numbers)
Ctrl+b <window number> (Move to the specified window number, the default bindings are from 0 – 9)
Ctrl+b q (Show pane numbers, when the numbers show up type the key to goto that pane)

tmux has a find-window option & key binding to ease navigation of many windows:

Ctrl+b f <window name> (Search for window name)

Ctrl+b w (Select from interactive list of windows)

2.1.1 Copy Mode

A tmux window may be in one of several modes. The default permits direct access to the terminal
attached to the window; the other is copy mode. Once in copy mode you can navigate the buffer
including scrolling the history. Use vi or emacs-style key bindings in copy mode. The default is
emacs, unless VISUAL or EDITOR contains ‘vi’

To enter copy mode do the following:

Ctrl+b [

You can navigate the buffer as you would in your default editor.

To quit copy mode, use one of the following keybindings:

vi mode:

emacs mode:

Esc

2.2 Browsing URLs

To browse URLs inside tmux you must have urlview ([Link]

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ges/urlview/)AUR installed and configured.

Inside a new terminal:

bind-key u capture-pane \; save-buffer /tmp/tmux-buffer \; run-shell "$TERMINAL -e urlview /tmp/tmux-buff

er"

Or inside a new tmux window (no new terminal needed):

bind-key u capture-pane \; save-buffer /tmp/tmux-buffer \; new-window -n "urlview" '$SHELL -c "urlview <

/tmp/tmux-buffer"'

2.3 Setting the correct term

2.3.1 256 colors

If you are using a 256 color terminal, you will need to set the correct term in tmux: tmux, or
tmux-256color. This can set in the configuration file:

[Link]

set -g default-terminal "tmux-256color"

Also, if tmux messes up, you can force tmux to assume that the terminal support 256 colors, by
adding the following alias in .bashrc:

alias tmux="tmux -2"

2.3.2 24-bit color

tmux supports 24-bit color. If your terminal supports this mode (see [1] ([Link]
rmstandard/colors/blob/master/[Link])), add it to the terminal-features
setting.

For example, if you use the Alacritty terminal, you would add:

set -as terminal-features ",alacritty*:RGB"

For other terminals, replace alacritty above with the relevant terminal type as stored in
$TERM .

See tmux(1) ([Link] for details about the RGB

terminfo flag.

2.3.3 xterm-keys

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To enable xterm-keys, add the following line in the configuration file:

[Link]

set-option -g xterm-keys on

If you enable xterm-keys in your [Link] , then you need to build a custom terminfo to
declare the new escape codes or applications will not know about them. Compile the following with
tic and you can use "xterm-screen-256color" as your TERM:

# A screen- based TERMINFO that declares the escape sequences

# enabled by the tmux config "set-window-option -g xterm-keys".
#
# Prefix the name with xterm- since some applications inspect
# the TERM *name* in addition to the terminal capabilities advertised.
xterm-screen-256color|GNU Screen with 256 colors bce and tmux xterm-keys,

# As of Nov'11, the below keys are picked up by

# .../tmux/blob/master/trunk/xterm-keys.c:
kDC=\E[3;2~, kEND=\E[1;2F, kHOM=\E[1;2H,
kIC=\E[2;2~, kLFT=\E[1;2D, kNXT=\E[6;2~, kPRV=\E[5;2~,
kRIT=\E[1;2C,

# Change this to screen-256color if the terminal you run tmux in

# doesn't support bce:
use=screen-256color-bce,

To check if your terminal support bce, you can use tic -c :

$ tic -c xterm-screen-256color
"xterm-screen-256color", line 16, terminal 'xterm-screen-256color': resolution of use=screen-256color-bce
failed

To compile with tic:

$ tic xterm-screen-256color

The file will be compiled and saved in $HOME/.terminfo or in /usr/share/terminfo/ if

run as root (and so available system-wide).

2.4 Theming
Tmux can be themed however in order to do so, first one needs to know the color codes. This can
be achieved by executing the below command, which will print the color codes together with a
sample of such color:

$ for i in {0..255}; do printf "\x1b[38;5;${i}mcolor${i} - ██████████\n"; done

The color codes printed using the above command can then be used to change the tmux color
scheme. The following is an example for how one can change the colors of the status bar:

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# Status line colors

set -g status-bg "color4" # blue background
set -g status-fg "color7" # gray text color
set -g status-right "%l:%M %p" # time format
set-window-option -g window-status-current-style "bg=color75,fg=color231 bold" # current window backgr
ound + foreground colors

The panes borders can also be themed as per below example:

# border colors
set -g pane-border-style fg="colour255"
set -g pane-active-border-style fg="colour33"

2.5 Other Settings

To limit the scrollback buffer to 10000 lines:

set -g history-limit 10000

Mouse can be toggled with

bind-key m set-option -g mouse \; display "Mouse: #{?mouse,ON,OFF}"

2.6 Autostart with systemd

There are some notable advantages to starting a tmux server at startup. Notably, when you start a
new tmux session, having the service already running reduces any delays in the startup.

Furthermore, any customization attached to your tmux session will be retained and your tmux
session can be made to persist even if you have never logged in, if you have some reason to do that
(like a heavily scripted tmux configuration or shared user tmux sessions).

The service below starts tmux for the specified user (i.e. start/enable with
tmux@[Link] ):

/etc/systemd/system/tmux@.service

[Unit]
Description=tmux session for user %I

[Service]
Type=forking
User=%I
# WARNING: use %I instead of %u here; %u=root in system services.
ExecStart=/usr/bin/tmux new-session -s %I -d
ExecStop=/usr/bin/tmux kill-session -t %I

[Install]
WantedBy=[Link]

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Tip

▪ You may want to add WorkingDirectory=custom_path to customize working

directory. If set to ~ , the home directory of the user specified in User= is used.
▪ Add -v tmux arg to generate tmux client and server logs in WorkingDirectory.
▪ If you want to import environment variables related to graphical session, such as
DISPLAY , WAYLAND_DISPLAY , or SESSION_MANAGER , change WantedBy option
to [Link] , and add After=[Link]
under [Unit] section.
▪ Alternatively, you can create a script that runs automatically after the desktop
environment, window manager, or Wayland compositor loads and imports related
variables using the tmux setenv -g name [value] .

Alternatively, you can place this file within your systemd/User directory (without User=%I and
by replacing [Link] with [Link] in WantedBy ), for example
~/.config/systemd/user/[Link] . This way the tmux service will start when you
log in, unless you also enable systemd/User#Automatic start-up of systemd user
instances. The user service will stay active on logout due to the default explained in
systemd/User#Kill user processes on logout for this method.

2.7 Start with systemd user instance and socket activation

A different way to start tmux through systemd is this pair of units:

/etc/systemd/user/tmux@.socket

[Unit]
Description=Terminal Multiplexer Activation Socket (listen on: %i)
Documentation=man:tmux(1)

[Socket]
ListenStream=/tmp/tmux-%U/%i
SocketMode=0600
DirectoryMode=0700

[Install]
WantedBy=[Link]

/etc/systemd/user/tmux@.service

[Unit]
Description=Terminal Multiplexer (listen on: %i)
Documentation=man:tmux(1)
Requires=tmux@%[Link]

[Service]
Environment=TMUX_SERVER_ARGS=
ExecStart=tmux -D $TMUX_SERVER_ARGS
ExecStartPost=tmux -L%i start
Slice=app-tmux-%[Link]

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[Install]
WantedBy=[Link]
Also=tmux@%[Link]

(Or plop them into ~/.config/systemd/user .) This creates a tmux process per service
instance, each with a separate socket. tmux -D starts a non-forking tmux server, which is
correctly passed the activation FD; but this process will not execute the configuration file
directives. tmux start runs a transient client which forces the server to execute the session, if
any.

To enable just the activation, run systemctl --user enable tmux@[Link] ; start the
client normally, with tmux -L NAME (just tmux when NAME is default ). Socket activation
alone simply ensures that the tmux server is moved into its own slice (
[Link]/[Link] ). This is equivalent to what systemd devs suggest (see
systemd-run(1) § EXAMPLES ([Link]
XAMPLES), under screen), and prevents it from being killed by the session-cleanup
mechanism ([Link] This
also allows acting on the whole group, e.g. systemctl --user freeze [Link] .

To enable the server startup, run systemctl --user enable tmux@[Link] . If your
user systemd instance is lingering, this runs tmux on boot; otherwise, on login. To have the
server initialise and run programs, define sessions in your tmux config file.

Note that tmux started this way inherits your systemd environment; unless spawning login shells
for every pane, consult Systemd/User#Environment_variables on how to populate it.

To change the configuration file for a single instance, use a drop-in:

/etc/systemd/user/tmux@[Link].d/[Link]

[Service]
Environment="TMUX_SERVER_ARGS=-f %h/.[Link]"

3 Session initialization
You can have tmux open a session with preloaded windows by including those details in your
~/.[Link] :

new -n WindowName Command

neww -n WindowName Command
neww -n WindowName Command

To start a session with split windows (multiple panes), include the splitw command below the
neww you would like to split; thus:

new -s SessionName -n WindowName Command

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neww -n foo/bar foo

splitw -v -p 50 -t 0 bar
selectw -t 1
selectp -t 0

would open 2 windows, the second of which would be named foo/bar and would be split vertically
in half (50%) with foo running above bar. Focus would be in window 2 (foo/bar), top pane (foo).

Note

Numbering for sessions, windows and panes starts at zero, unless you have specified a base-
index of 1 in your .conf

To manage multiple sessions, source separate session files from your configuration file:

# initialize sessions
bind F source-file ~/.tmux/foo
bind B source-file ~/.tmux/bar

4 Clipboard integration

Tip

The tmux plugin tmux-yank ([Link] provides

similar functionality.

It is possible to copy a tmux selection to the display server clipboard (both primary/secondary
selections), and paste from it into tmux. The following tmux configuration file snippets integrate
X11 and Wayland clipboard/selection with the current tmux selection.

Note

It may be necessary to unbind the "previous window" shortcut with unbind p for the Vim
style examples to work.

4.1 On Xorg
The first possibility is using xsel ([Link]

Emacs style:

bind-key -T copy-mode y send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xsel -i -p && xsel -o -p | xsel -i -b"

bind-key C-y run "xsel -o | tmux load-buffer - ; tmux paste-buffer"

Vim style:

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bind-key -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xsel -i -p && xsel -o -p | xsel -i -b"

bind-key p run "xsel -o | tmux load-buffer - ; tmux paste-buffer"

xclip ([Link] could also be used for this

purpose. Unlike xsel, it works better when printing a raw bitstream that does not fit the current
locale. Nevertheless, it is neater to use xsel because xclip does not close STDOUT after it has read
from the tmux buffer. As such, tmux does not know that the copy task has completed, and
continues to wait for xclip to terminate, thereby rendering tmux unresponsive. A workaround is to
redirect STDOUT to /dev/null :

Emacs style:

bind-key -T copy-mode y send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xclip -i -sel clip > /dev/null"

bind-key C-y run "xclip -o -sel clip | tmux load-buffer - ; tmux paste-buffer"

Vim style:

bind-key -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xclip -i -sel clip > /dev/null"

bind-key p run "xclip -o -sel clip | tmux load-buffer - ; tmux paste-buffer"

4.2 On Wayland
Make sure to have wl-clipboard ([Link]
board) installed.

Emacs style:

bind-key -T copy-mode y send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "wl-copy && wl-paste -n | wl-copy -p"

bind-key C-y run "wl-paste -n | tmux load-buffer - ; tmux paste-buffer"

Vim style:

bind-key -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "wl-copy && wl-paste -n | wl-copy -p"

bind-key p run "wl-paste -n | tmux load-buffer - ; tmux paste-buffer"

4.3 Urxvt middle click

Note

To use this, you need to enable mouse support

There is an unofficial perl extension (mentioned ([Link]

Q#how-do-i-copy-a-selection-from-tmux-to-the-systems-clipboard) in the official FAQ
([Link] to enable copying/pasting in and out of urxvt
with tmux via Middle Mouse Clicking.

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First, you will need to download the perl script and place it into urxvts perl lib:

wget [Link]
mv osc-xterm-clipboard /usr/lib/urxvt/perl/

You will also need to enable that perl script in your .Xdefaults:

~/.Xdefaults

...
*[Link]-ext-common: osc-xterm-clipboard
...

Next, you want to tell tmux about the new function and enable mouse support (if you have not
already):

~/.[Link]

...
set-option -ga terminal-override ',rxvt-uni*:XT:Ms=\E]52;%p1%s;%p2%s\007'
set -g mouse on
...

That's it. Be sure to end all instances of tmux before trying the new MiddleClick functionality.

While in tmux, Shift+MiddleMouseClick will paste the clipboard selection while just
MiddleMouseClick will paste your tmux buffer. Outside of tmux, just use MiddleMouseClick to
paste your tmux buffer and your standard Ctrl+c to copy.

5 Tips and tricks

5.1 Start tmux with default session layout

Session managers like tmuxinator and tmuxp make it easy to manage common session
configurations.

For tmuxinator, install tmuxinator ([Link]

or/)AUR. Test your installation with

$ tmuxinator doctor

5.1.1 Get the default layout values

Start tmux as usual and configure your windows and panes layout as you like. When finished, get
the current layout values by executing (while you are still within the current tmux session)

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tmux list-windows

The output may look like this (two windows with 3 panes and 2 panes layout)

0: default* (3 panes) [274x83] [layout 20a0,274x83,0,0{137x83,0,0,3,136x83,138,0[136x41,138,0,5,136x41,13

8,42,6]}] @2 (active)
1: remote- (2 panes) [274x83] [layout e3d3,274x83,0,0[274x41,0,0,4,274x41,0,42,7]] @3

The Interesting part you need to copy for later use begins after [layout... and excludes ... ] @2
(active). For the first window layout you need to copy e.g.
20a0,274x83,0,0{137x83,0,0,3,136x83,138,0[136x41,138,0,5,136x41,138,42,6]}

5.1.2 Define the default tmux layout

Knowing this, you can exit the current tmux session. Following this, you create your default tmux
session layout by editing tmuxinator's configuration file (Do not copy the example, get your layout
values as described above)

~/.tmuxinator/[Link]

name: default
root: ~/
windows:
- default:
layout: 20a0,274x83,0,0{137x83,0,0,3,136x83,138,0[136x41,138,0,5,136x41,138,42,6]}
panes:
- clear
- vim
- clear && emacs -nw
- remote:
layout: 24ab,274x83,0,0{137x83,0,0,3,136x83,138,0,4}
panes:
-
-

The example defines two windows named "default" and "remote". With your determined layout
values. For each pane you have to use at least one - line. Within the first window panes you start
the commandline "clear" in pane one, "vim" in pane two and "clear && emacs -nw" executes two
commands in pane three on each tmux start. The second window layout has two panes without
defining any start commmands.

Test the new default layout with:

tmuxinator default

5.1.3 Autostart tmux with default tmux layout

If you like to start your terminal session with your default tmux session layout edit

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~/.bashrc

if [ -z "$TMUX" ]; then
tmuxinator default
fi

5.1.4 Alternate approach for default session

Instead of using the above method, one can just write a bash script that when run, will create the
default session and attach to it. Then you can execute it from a terminal to get the pre-designed
configuration in that terminal

#!/bin/bash
tmux new-session -d -n WindowName Command
tmux new-window -n NewWindowName
tmux split-window -v
tmux selectp -t 1
tmux split-window -h
tmux selectw -t 1
tmux -2 attach-session -d

5.2 Start tmux in urxvt

Use this command to start urxvt with a started tmux session. I use this with the exec command
from my .ratpoisonrc file.

urxvt -e bash -c "tmux -q has-session && exec tmux attach-session -d || exec tmux new-session -n$USER -
s$USER@$HOSTNAME"

5.3 Start tmux on every shell login

if [ -x "$(command -v tmux)" ] && [ -n "${DISPLAY}" ] && [ -z "${TMUX}" ]; then

exec tmux new-session -A -s ${USER} >/dev/null 2>&1
fi

What the above snippet does is the following:

1. test if tmux is executable,

2. and if a graphical session is running (remove this condition if you want tmux to start in
any login shell, but it might interfere with autostarting X at login),
3. and if we are not already inside a tmux session,
4. then try to attach, if the attachment fails, start a new session.
If you are using systemd as a user to keep a session alive, you can replace the command
inside the if-block with the following commands to attach to that session and detach all the other
connected clients:

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if ! systemctl --user is-active --quiet [Link]; then

systemctl --user start [Link]
fi
exec tmux attach-session -d -t "${USER}" >/dev/null 2>&1

5.4 Start a non-login shell

tmux starts a login shell by default ([Link]
[Link]/[Link]), which may result in multiple negative side effects:

▪ Users of fortune may notice that quotes are printed when creating a new panel.
▪ The configuration files for login shells such as ~/.profile are interpreted each time a
new panel is created, so commands intended to be run on session initialization (e.g.
setting audio level) are executed.
To disable this behaviour, add to ~/.[Link] :

set -g default-command "${SHELL}"

5.5 Use tmux windows like tabs

The following settings added to ~/.[Link] allow to use tmux windows like tabs, such as
those provided by the reference of these hotkeys — urxvt's tabbing extensions. An advantage
thereof is that these virtual “tabs” are independent of the terminal emulator.

#urxvt tab like window switching (-n: no prior escape seq)

bind -n S-down new-window
bind -n S-left prev
bind -n S-right next
bind -n C-left swap-window -t -1
bind -n C-right swap-window -t +1

Of course, those should not overlap with other applications' hotkeys, such as the terminal's. Given
that they substitute terminal tabbing that might as well be deactivated, though.

It can also come handy to supplement the EOT hotkey Ctrl+d with one for tmux's detach:

bind-key -n C-j detach

5.6 Clients simultaneously interacting with various windows of a session

In Practical Tmux ([Link] Brandur Leach
writes:

Screen and tmux's behaviour for when multiple clients are attached to one session
differs slightly. In Screen, each client can be connected to the session but view different

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windows within it, but in tmux, all clients connected to one session must view the same
window.
This problem can be solved in tmux by spawning two separate sessions and
synchronizing the second one to the windows of the first, then pointing a second new
session to the first.

The tmx script below implements this — the version here is slightly modified to execute
tmux new-window if 1 is its second parameter. Invoked as tmx base_session_name [1]
, it launches the base session if necessary. Otherwise a new "client" session linked to the base,
optionally add a new window and attach, setting it to kill itself once it turns "zombie". Do not
forget to make it executable.

~/bin/tmx

#!/bin/bash
# Modified TMUX start script from:
# [Link]

# Works because bash automatically trims by assigning to variables and by passing arguments
trim() { echo $1; }

if [[ -z "$1" ]]; then

echo "Specify session name as the first argument"
exit
fi

# Only because I often issue `ls` to this script by accident

if [[ "$1" == "ls" ]]; then
tmux ls
exit
fi

base_session="$1"
# This actually works without the trim() on all systems except OSX
tmux_nb=$(trim `tmux ls | grep "^$base_session" | wc -l`)
if [[ "$tmux_nb" == "0" ]]; then
echo "Launching tmux base session $base_session ..."
tmux new-session -s $base_session
else
# Make sure we are not already in a tmux session
if [[ -z "$TMUX" ]]; then
echo "Launching copy of base session $base_session ..."
# Session id is date and time to prevent conflict
session_id=`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`
# Create a new session (without attaching it) and link to base session
# to share windows
tmux new-session -d -t $base_session -s $session_id
if [[ "$2" == "1" ]]; then
# Create a new window in that session
tmux new-window
fi
# Attach to the new session & kill it once orphaned
tmux attach-session -t $session_id \; set-option destroy-unattached
fi
fi

A useful setting for this is

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setw -g aggressive-resize on

added to ~/.[Link] . It causes tmux to resize a window based on the smallest client actually
viewing it, not on the smallest one attached to the entire session.

An alternative is to put the following ~/.bashrc :

~/.bashrc

function rsc() {
CLIENTID=$1.`date +%S`
tmux new-session -d -t $1 -s $CLIENTID \; set-option destroy-unattached \; attach-session -t $CLIENTID
}

function mksc() {
tmux new-session -d -s $1
rsc $1
}

Citing the author:

"mksc foo" creates a always detached permanent client named "foo". It also calls "rsc
foo" to create a client to newly created session. "rsc foo" creates a new client grouped
by "foo" name. It has destroy-unattached turned on so when I leave it, it kills client.
Therefore, when my computer looses network connectivity, all "[Link]" clients
are killed while "foo" remains. I can then call "rsc foo" to continue work from where I
stopped.

5.7 Correct the TERM variable according to terminal type

Instead of setting a fixed TERM variable in tmux, it is possible to set the proper TERM
(either screen or screen-256color ) according to the type of your terminal emulator:

~/.[Link]

## set the default TERM

set -g default-terminal screen

## update the TERM variable of terminal emulator when creating a new session or attaching a existing sess
ion
set -g update-environment 'DISPLAY SSH_ASKPASS SSH_AGENT_PID SSH_CONNECTION WINDOWID XAUTHORITY TERM'
## determine if we should enable 256-colour support
if "[[ ${TERM} =~ 256color || ${TERM} == fbterm ]]" 'set -g default-terminal screen-256color'

~/.zshrc

## workaround for handling TERM variable in multiple tmux sessions properly (by Nicholas Marriott)
if [[ -n ${TMUX} && -n ${commands[tmux]} ]];then
case $(tmux showenv TERM 2>/dev/null) in
*256color) ;&
TERM=fbterm)
TERM=screen-256color ;;

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*)
TERM=screen
esac
fi

5.8 Reload an updated configuration without restarting tmux

By default tmux reads ~/.[Link] only if it was not already running. To have tmux load a
configuration file afterwards, execute:

tmux source-file path

This can be added to ~/.[Link] as e. g.:

~/.[Link]

bind r source-file path

You can also do ^: and type :

source .[Link]

5.9 Template script to run program in new session or attach to existing

one
This script checks for a program presumed to have been started by a previous run of itself. Unless
found it creates a new tmux session and attaches to a window named after and running the
program. If however the program was found it merely attaches to the session and selects the
window.

#!/bin/bash

PID=$(pidof $1)

if [ -z "$PID" ]; then
tmux new-session -d -s main ;
tmux new-window -t main -n $1 "$*" ;
fi
tmux attach-session -d -t main ;
tmux select-window -t $1 ;
exit 0

A derived version to run irssi with the nicklist plugin can be found on its ArchWiki page.

5.10 Terminal emulator window titles

If you SSH into a host in a tmux window, you will notice the window title of your terminal
emulator remains to be user@localhost rather than user@server . To allow the title bar to

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adapt to whatever host you connect to, set the following in ~/.[Link]

set -g set-titles on
set -g set-titles-string "#T"

For set-titles-string , #T will display user@host:~ and change accordingly as you

connect to different hosts.

5.11 Automatic layouting

When creating new splits or destroying older ones the currently selected layout is not applied. To
fix that, add following binds which will apply the currently selected layout to new or remaining
panes:

bind-key -n M-c kill-pane \; select-layout

bind-key -n M-n split-window \; select-layout

Tip

You may be interested in tmux-xpanes ([Link]

ux-xpanes/)AUR which makes managing window layouts and SSH connections easy.

5.12 Vim colorscheme not loading

See the following if your vim colorscheme is not loading in tmux: [2] ([Link]
om/a/47994805) [3] ([Link]
1605)

5.13 Vim friendly configuration

See [4] ([Link] for a
configuration friendly to vim users.

5.14 Friendly pane splitting

The default key-binding for splitting a pane vertically is Ctrl+b % and for splitting a pane
horizontally is Ctrl+b " . That can be difficult to type depending of your keyboard layout and it
is also hard to remember.

A more friendly key-binding is to use Ctrl+b h for splitting horizontally and Ctrl+b v for
splitting a pane vertically, it is also very convenient to remember.

To make this change, add these lines in ~/.[Link] :

# More friendly split pane

bind-key h split-window -h

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bind-key v split-window -v

5.15 Inhibit system suspension

If tmux hangs when connected from another device because the host goes to sleep, run session's
shell command with an inhibition lock:

tmux new-session -A "systemd-inhibit --what=idle $SHELL"

6 Troubleshooting

6.1 Scrolling issues

In case of trouble scrolling in the terminal with Shift-Page Up/Down, the following will disable the
smcup and rmcup capabilities for any term that reports itself as anything beginning with xterm :

set -ga terminal-overrides ',xterm*:smcup@:rmcup@'

This tricks the terminal emulator into thinking tmux is a full screen application like pico or
mutt[5] ([Link]
x), which will make the scrollback be recorded properly. Beware however, it will get a bit messed
up when switching between windows/panes. Consider using tmux's native scrollback instead.

6.2 Mouse scrolling

Note

This interferes with selection buffer copying and pasting. To copy/paste to/from the selection
buffer hold the shift key.

If you want to scroll with your mouse wheel, ensure mode-mouse is on in .[Link]

set -g mouse on

You can set scroll History with:

set -g history-limit 30000

For mouse wheel scrolling as from tmux 2.1 try adding one or both of these to ~/.[Link]

bind -T root WheelUpPane if-shell -F -t = "#{alternate_on}" "send-keys -M" "select-pane -t =; copy-mode

-e; send-keys -M"
bind -T root WheelDownPane if-shell -F -t = "#{alternate_on}" "send-keys -M" "select-pane -t =; send-keys

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-M"

Though the above will only scroll one line at a time, add this solution to scroll an entire page
instead

bind -t vi-copy WheelUpPane page-up

bind -t vi-copy WheelDownPane page-down
bind -t emacs-copy WheelUpPane page-up
bind -t emacs-copy WheelDownPane page-down

6.3 Terminal emulator does not support UTF-8 mouse events

When the terminal emulator does not support the UTF-8 mouse events and the mouse on tmux
option is set, left-clicking inside the terminal window might paste strings like [M# or [Ma into
the promt.

To solve this issue set:

set -g mouse-utf8 off

6.4 Shift+F6 not working in Midnight Commander

See Midnight Commander#Broken shortcuts.

7 See also
▪ BBS topic ([Link]
▪ Screen and tmux feature comparison ([Link]
▪ powerline ([Link] a dynamic statusbar for tmux
▪ Plugins for tmux ([Link]
▪ Oh My Tmux! ([Link]
▪ tmux Wiki ([Link]
Tutorials

▪ Practical Tmux ([Link]

▪ manual page tmux(1) ([Link]
▪ Tmux tutorial Part 1 ([Link]
al-multiplexer/) and Part 2 ([Link]
erminal-multiplexer-part-2/)
▪ The Tao of tmux ([Link] an ebook by Tony
Narlock, author of tmuxp ([Link] and libtmux ([Link]
[Link])

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Retrieved from "[Link]

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