I gave up on it once I discovered https://zellij.dev/

Just even for how tab and panes are setup, and how it's good for scrolling and text selection with your mouse for copy pasting.

I had my tmux customized to the point I forgot how to use it on a clean install which is a problem when I'm sshing into a server.

I wish it had better defaults but now I run it as is. After a while you get used to it. The only thing I always have to change is the mouse scroll and my brain cannot retain the exact command.

I prefer to use tmux non-interactively. For example, I use it for running daemons in the foreground, (textmode) screen scraping and scripting text-only browser

I do almost all interactive work while detached from tmux

I also rely on tmux buffers for a textmode "clipboard" (I do not use x11)

I left tmux for zellij after several unsuccessful attempts to get Shift+Enter working.

Was quite impressed initially and invested weeks in building new muscle memory, but somehow Zellij crashed with panic more than once, leaving all my processes orphaned. Decided to go back to tmux, and found a simple fix for my Shift+Enter issue.

In case anyone is looking for it, the fix is "bind-key -T root S-Enter send-keys C-j" borrowed from https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/6072.

I've been thoroughly impressed with tmux control mode[0] in iTerm2. This lets you manage remote terminal windows with your local window management provider. It is currently in the process of being implemented in ghostty[1] as well, can't wait!

[0] https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Control-Mode

[1] https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues/1935#issuecomm...

I use c-q for prefix key because it doesn’t conflict with common zsh and vim bindings.

Because the author suggested swapping caps lock and control key, I also recommend mapping escape key at the control key and change the behavior based on whether another key is pressed. For example, if you press control + a, it sends c-a, but if you only press control key and then release, it sends escape. It makes your vim life (and in general) a lot easier. You don’t have to compete the most variable real estate on the keyboard, right next to the A key.

For most bindings like moving, resizing, and splitting,I emulate vim bindings.

Also, -r flag for bind-key command is impotent, because it enables to repeat commands like changing the pane size or move focus. You don’t have to press prefix key each time.

If you want to get fancy look with minimal setting, use plugins like nord tmux theme.

If you're interested in an out of the box multiplexer. https://zellij.dev/ is great. I've been using it for about a year now and loving it.

Worth mentioning my tmux llm chat helper sidechat: https://github.com/day50-dev/sidechat

I've been told more than once it's life-changing. I certainly use it every day.

There’s a lot of ways tmux could be used, but when it is part of IDE the most important usability tweaks that make tmux rock for me personally are:

— session configuration save/recall (with pane layout for each tab and directory for each pane[0]),

— nvim integration (for seamless split navigation and so that I can create or reattach to a tmux session in an nvim float, even though that nvim usually runs inside tmux),

— a bind to force-reload a pane if (when!) a command hangs.

For switching between tabs, I find that the most ideal bind is simply Cmd + pane number. There’s never more than 10 panes that I’d often want to switch to within a single session.

[0] I always forget what terminology a given multiplexer uses, so let’s just call them “panes” and “tabs”.

My two favorite tmux QoL improvements are enabling seamless navigation between neovim and tmux (there are many plugins but i use this one https://github.com/aserowy/tmux.nvim) and extrakto which lets you fuzzy select anything in the tmux buffer and insert into the cursor or copy it to the clipboard. (https://github.com/laktak/extrakto)

I appreciate that tmux has theoretical advantages over screen, but man does the implementation suck. On Mac it still seems like there's no way to copy text if you have mouse mode on (at least in code-server).

I read "tmux 2: mouse-free productivity" in a weekend years ago and it may be, pound-for-pound, one of the more impactful books on my productivity.

Seems like they are keeping up-to-date too: https://bookshop.org/p/books/tmux-3-productive-mouse-free-de...

I highly recommend just turning the mouse on, it's amazing for resizing panels and the rightclick menu is nice.

  set -g mouse on

for multi-monitor setups

  setw -g aggressive-resize on

is also really nice.

I would love to have a way to switch sessions easily, like with panes where I just click or have more shortcuts available

I've always written my code in vim and preferred CLIs in general, but I really want a GUI for the terminal itself, including tmux. iTerm2 makes it nice for example, even if it's only to use the meta/super key instead of the heavily overloaded control.

Any guides for tmux configuration that works well with Emacs? The use of Ctrl and Meta for basic operations conflicts with a lot of Emacs commands.

I like having a red bar for tmux running as root and a blue one for running it as a normal user, e.g. for root:

    set -g status-style "bg=red"

I also like to have the bar on top and the status centered:

    set -g status-justify absolute-centre
    set -g status-position top

I stopped using tmux when I started using kitty terminal with native split windows. I prefer the native window management of kitty, but I do miss the session saving of tmux (e.g. if I accidentally close a tab).

the most tmux thing in the world is that "make tmux usable" is still a genre.

I've had the ctrl-a setup ever since migrating from screen to tmux, just due to muscle memory. But it is more conveniently located than ctrl-b - it's also rather nice if I have multiple nested layers of tmux due to temporary ones on other hosts. Sure you can just keep repeating the bind, but, just remembering that the second layer uses ctrl-b is a bit more convenient I feel. Slows me down a little, but usually I'm not using the 2nd layer as much.

I don't use capslock for ctrl though. It's much too useful as the Compose key ;)

i used to use tmux a lot when i used to develop on arch, since i moved to macos i never installed it.

tbh i even forgot what it used to buy me.

I ended up AI-slopcoding myself a small shell script for the few things I need from tmix: https://gist.github.com/dmitriid/523a5229c9a17a1cf4ad9182f4c...

I just couldn't be bothered to remember all the prefixed commands :)

nice update on tmux

that's pretty nice, but did you try cmux.com