Using tmux for productivity

Tmux comes from Terminal Multiplexer. It’s used to handle multiple terminal sessions in a single window. Sounds cool if you know how you feel when 10 or 12 terminals lying in your desktop.

To start tmux session type… well tmux in your terminal. If you want to create new session with a name type

tmux new -s mysession

You can see the session name on the bottom.

Naming the sessions is crucial sometimes because it gives you a idea what that session was intended to do for you. For creating a new session. See below.

Sessions

Ctrl + b and then :new -s sessionname. Ctrl + b gives us the ability to command to tmux. If we didn’t press that combination we will just end up write in terminal session.

Sessions are like containers. We fill them with our panes. So consider them as buckets for terminals. Apparently only one per window is allowed. Once you create a new session you immediately switch in to that,Detaching the previous one. It doesn’t mean its closed, but hidden underneath the new session. To view sessions in the tmux…

Ctrl + b s

You’ll see the session that is attached.

Ctrl + b s list sessions
Ctrl + b $ name sessions

Windows

Windows are like individual terminal windows. When created it takes the whole terminal emulators space and presents us with a new playground. Windows can be used to isolate processes and also It comes handy when you want to copy something. Because with panes it will copy what’s other panes as well. Try it, you will see.

[Session name] 0:windowname_1 1:windowname_2

Ctrl + b c creates window
Ctrl + b w list window
Ctrl + b n next window
Ctrl + b f find window, Well well well… 😛
Ctrl + b , name window
Ctrl + b & kill a window
Ctrl + b :swap-windows -s <source window number> -t <destination window number> swaps windows source to destination.
Ctrl + b :swap-windows -t -1 moves window to left by one position
Ctrl + b :swap-windows -t 1 moves the window to given position.

Panes

True power comes with panes.

Ctrl + b " Split pane horizontally
Ctrl + b % Split pane vertically
Ctrl + b { Move the current pane left
Ctrl + b } Move the current pane right

That’s it? No. We still have to move around the panes. And sessions.

To switch between panes use Ctrl + b Arrow keys. And go the last used pane Ctrl + b ;. And also you can switch the layout of your terminal sessions with Ctrl + b Spacebar.

Ctrl + b o swap panes. It didn’t swap panes in my experience but switched focus.
Ctrl + b q show pane numbers
Ctrl + b x kill pane
Ctrl + b ! make the pane to a window. To copy text etc.
Ctrl + b :join-pane -t <optional session> :<pane index> restore window as a pane. It’s mess but you can customize it with a key. As for default configuration I don’t see it has a key assigned.
Ctrl + b + ↑ or Ctrl + b :resize-pane -U <optional size> Resize pane upward
Ctrl + b + ↓ or Ctrl + b :resize-pane -D <optional size> Resize pane downward
Ctrl + b + → or Ctrl + b :resize-pane -R <optional size> Resize pane right
Ctrl + b + ← or Ctrl + b :resize-pane -L <optional size> Resize pane left
Ctrl + b x closes the pane

Selecting text

A problem I had by using tmux is scrolling. Turns out we have to use Vim commands fo that. (Oh boy! ) . To enable Vim commands Ctrl + b :setw -g mode-keys vi then…

Ctrl + b [ Enter copy mode
Ctrl + b PgUp Enter copy mode and go one page up
q to quit from copy mode
g goto the top line
G goto the bottom line
Arrow up Scroll up
Arrow down Scroll down
h move cursor left
j move cursor down
k move cursor up
l move cursor right
w move cursor forward one word at a time
b move cursor back one word at a time
/ search forward
? search backward
n next keyword occurrence
N previous keyword occurrence
Spacebar Start selection
Esc Copy selection
Ctrl + b ]Paste contents to buffer_0

Buffers

Ctrl + b :show-buffer show contents of buffer_0
Ctrl + b :capture-pane copy entire visible contents to the buffer
Ctrl + b :list-buffers Show all buffers
Ctrl + b :choose-buffer Show all buffers and paste selected
Ctrl + b :save-buffer buf.txt saves the buffer to file
Ctrl + b :delete-buffer -b 1 delete buffer_1