tmux

tmux does two related things:

split a terminal into panes and tabs
detach and reattach your terminal from a tmux session

tmux is very similar to gnu screen. they’re basically the same program written at two different times. ah well.

people prefer tmux mainly because out-of-the-box, tabs update their title to whatever program is running (open a terminal and run man, it will update the title to man)

leader

the leader key is ctrl-b. press ctrl-b then press the command

sessions

creating:

tmux new -s session_name
or tmux new to automatically pick a name (0, 1, 2, 3..)
or just tmux

listing:

tmux list-sessions, alias tmux ls
will print “no server running on …” if there are no sessions.

editing:

tmux rename -t old new: rename session
prints “no current client” for some reason but does work
inside the session: leader + $

deleting:

tmux kill-session -t (session id).
tmux kill-server. closes everything.

detaching:

inside tmux, press the leader key (ctrl-b) then press d

attaching:

tmux attach, or just tmux a. specify a session with -t

this is already pretty useful even if you use nothing else from tmux…

windows

these are like browser tabs

creating

leader + C: create a window

listing

they’re listed along the bottom bar
leader + W: list windows (gets kinda fancy)

deleting

leader + &: kill window. will ask for confirmation
you can also kill the last pane in a window (leader + x) and it will close

selecting

leader + number 0 through 9: select that window (active window has * after it)
leader + N: next window
leader + P: prev window
the leader + W listing windows is also useful

editing

leader + ,: rename window
leader + .: renumber window

panes

splitting the terminal babey