Getting Started with Tmux

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

Our great sponsors
  • WorkOS - The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
  • InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
  • SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
  • tmuxp

    🖥️ Session manager for tmux, build on libtmux.

  • You use iTerm shortcuts instead. You can customize those as you like. So it feels just like using iTerm, but the panes are running in tmux.

    The main reason to do this (for me) is to use (tmuxp)[https://tmuxp.git-pull.com] to configure window sets for different projects / clients and start them up quickly.

  • vim-tmux-navigator

    Seamless navigation between tmux panes and vim splits

  • Tmux becomes more awesome when you use something like Alacritty or Kitty and map your system's key (Apple's command key or... whatever it would be on Linux or Windows) and use that as your "tmux key". That way you can make single-chord bindings for all things tmux and life becomes better. If you use Vim, adding VimTmuxNavigator[0] improves things so much. For example, to seemlessly switch between panes, be they tmux panes or vim panes, I use `cmd-h`, `cmh-j`, `cmd-k`, `cmd-l`.

    It's possible to achieve "command as tmux key" with iTerm which I did do for years but I don't recommend it. It's very hacky.

    [0] https://github.com/christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator

  • WorkOS

    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

    WorkOS logo
  • dotfiles

    My config files (by sodapopcan)

  • Oh my—I actually just mentioned Kitty for diplomatic reasons as some folks feel it's a friendlier alternative to Alacritty. I've personally never used it myself. Alacritty has recommended using tmux from the beginning (originally it planned to never even implement scrollback and recommended tmux instead, but they caved and now there is native scrollback).

    I believe I used this article when I switched over from iTerm to Alacritty: https://arslan.io/2018/02/05/gpu-accelerated-terminal-alacri...

    Otherwise, here's my alacritty config: https://github.com/sodapopcan/dotfiles/blob/f9eba86bf292aa3b.... Line 57 is where the keybindings start (They are annoying to read since they use escape sequences). I make my tmux prefix `ctrl-space` (because ctrl-b is useful), then in Alacritty pressing `cmd` sends `ctrl-space` to tmux.

  • Tmuxinator

    Manage complex tmux sessions easily

  • I use https://github.com/tmuxinator/tmuxinator for my workspaces. Doesn't save ad-hoc layouts, but usually I find one layout that works per project, then create a tmuxinator config for it, so after reboot, it's a short "tmuxinator start $my-project" away to get back to how I want it to be.

  • tmuxed

    A fast, flexible workflow manager built on top of tmux.

  • tmux is fantastic. For years I've used it as a basic way to standardize development environments by using splits and multi-panes -- for a long time I stuck a bash script in a directory and told folks to "yarn dev" or whatever to stand up docker-compose, their backend, ngrok, and so forth, but I recently polished it up into a downloadable single-binary application that uses a YAML file that you can just drop in a repository:

    https://github.com/eropple/tmuxed

  • missing-semester

    The Missing Semester of Your CS Education 📚

  • just got introduced to it whilst traversing this course which I highly recommend regardless of technical level https://missing.csail.mit.edu/

    I would add foot to the list: https://github.com/DanteAlighierin/foot

  • InfluxDB

    Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

    InfluxDB logo
  • iterm2

  • I had trouble getting the tmux setup working in iterm.

    The main page suggests -CC, but the best practices wiki[0] says to use `-CC new -A -s main`, but this causes iterm to warn that a session is already started and doesn't actually create or reattach like I expected. I also had trouble getting the tmux select-layout to work: when I tried it all my panes just exited with an error. I would like to have iterm behave similarly to Kitty's tall layout[1] which I think is the same thing as tmux's main layout, but haven't figured out how to make it work. Anybody have tips on making these wek?

    [0]: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/wikis/tmux-Integration-...

  • tmux

    tmux source code

  • I’ve had to stop using tmux on macOS (MacBook Pro 2018).

    For some reason I kept getting extreme slowdowns/laggy behaviour when using neovim.

    I’ve seen this thread: https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/353

    I tried everything in the thread and still end up with a laggy terminal. For now I just use iterm2 with tabs but I miss my tmux.

    On my personal Linux laptop, I never encounter the same lag with the same setup.

  • .tmux

    🇫🇷 Oh my tmux! My self-contained, pretty & versatile tmux configuration made with ❤️

  • Looks like no one has mentioned https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux

    You still need to learn the basics but this lowers the learning curve a lot.

  • wezterm

    A GPU-accelerated cross-platform terminal emulator and multiplexer written by @wez and implemented in Rust

  • https://github.com/wez/wezterm/issues/336 is tracking that for wezterm although I can attest that they're right, it's pretty rough right now

    I thought there was another one, but searching for "tmux" in the issues of the major terminal emulators is worthless since there are so many pages

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

Suggest a related project

Related posts