tmux is a terminal multiplexer. We can have multiple terminals inside a single terminal, which is especially useful when we ssh into a remote machine.

tmux has 3 levels of hierarchy,

• Sessions - To have completely different work environments for different concerns
• Windows - To have multiple tabs for what that window represents, basically one for monitoring logs and performance and another to execute the commands required.
• Panes - To have different panes inside a window, like one running top, and another running a couple of tail commands on log files.

To start using tmux, we just need to run the command tmux.

One key concept in tmux is the concept of prefix key. After pressing the prefix key, tmux enters command mode, similar to vim's insert, command, and view modes. The prefix key for tmux by default is Ctrl + B.

Basic commands

• Start a new session

tmux

• Detach from a session

Ctrl+B d

• Attach to the last accessed session

tmux attach 

• Exit and quit tmux

Ctrl+B &

Session management

• Create a named session

tmux new -s <session_name>

• Attach to a session

tmux attach -t <session_name>

or

tmux a -t <session_name>

• Switch sessions

tmux switch -t <session_name>

• List sessions

tmux ls

• Kill sessions

tmux kill-session -t <session_name>

Window management

Pane management

Command mode

Some other key points are we can enter command mode by

Ctrl + B :

We can allow access to a mouse by

set -g mouse

Tmux config

We have a tmux config file that is a dot config file. We can create it using the following command.

vi $HOME/.tmux.conf

We can add the above command to allow mouse usage into the tmux conf file.

Tmux References

There is a lot more to tmux than this, which we can check out from the tmux manual.

Originally posted on vignesh.page.

Hope tmux improves your daily workflow as it did mine. Comment out any cool features or tmux plugins that you find useful.