Tmux Cheat Sheet: Essential Commands And Quick References

Running parallel processes on a graphical user interface (GUI) usually requires tabbed terminals. But what if you could only work with command-line interfaces (CLI)? The answer is Tmux, which is short for “terminal multiplexer.”

Better still, in Tmux, you can detach from a session without losing its state and later return to it by re-attaching it. This hands-free functionality is helpful when you, say, need to make multiple SSH connections because, by default, an SSH session occupies the entire CLI, hindering you from working on other tasks in tandem.

A PDF download of this cheat sheet is available here.

Install Tmux

Tmux is available for Linux and macOS. As for Windows, you can run Tmux via the Linux Subsystem feature by following the procedures here if you’re using Windows 10 build 14361 or above. This article assumes you are using either Linux or macOS.

Tmux Terms

Familiarize yourself with them as they often appear in Tmux-related discussions.

Term	Description
Pane	An open command prompt (known as “pseudo-terminal”), which may occupy the entire screen or appear horizontally/vertically stacked
Window	A single/split view of open panes occupying the screen:
Session	A single collection of pseudo-terminals under the management of Tmux. Once you kill the last session, Tmux exits. Each session is persistent and will survive accidental disconnection (such as SSH connection timeout) or intentional detaching by the user. In the example above, the session comprises panes 0:bash, 1:bash, and 2:bash. The current pane is 2:bash, marked by an asterisk *. Here, the cursor is active, and you can type into the pane. The other pane in the same window is 1:bash, marked by a hyphen -.
Client	The background process displaying your session
Server	A single server manages all open sessions. Servers and clients are separate processes that communicate through a socket in /tmp.

Tmux Commands

You may run Tmux commands by name from the CLI, such as tmux starts a new session. When you start Tmux, it creates a new single-window session and displays it on the screen.

A status line at the bottom shows current session information and is used to enter interactive commands prefixed by the trigger key combination Ctrl+b (Linux) or control+b (macOS). This trigger tells Tmux to watch out for keystrokes of interest.

Ctrl+b alone applies to short commands of one or two keys. Ctrl+b followed by the colon character (:) brings up a prompt for you to issue specific commands, after which you press Enter for execution.

Tmux Shortcuts

Run the following from the CLI:

Run these commands inside a Tmux session:

Scroll down for specific commands in detail.

Tmux Sessions

Create new session

List all sessions

Operations on sessions

Terminate (kill) sessions

Tmux Windows

Tmux Panes

Command	Description
Ctrl+b <command>
q	Show pane numbers:
q 0 … 9	Switch to pane by number
o	Go to next pane
z	Zoom in/out of pane
!	Convert pane into new window
%	Split vertically
"	Split horizontally
→	Switch to right pane
←	Switch to left pane
↑	Switch to upper pane
↓	Switch to lower pane
;	Toggle last active pane
[spacebar]	Toggle between pane layouts
{	Move current pane leftward
}	Move current pane rightward
x	Close current pane
:setw synchronize-panes	Toggle synchronize-panes (the ability to send the same command to all panes at once)
:resize-pane -L 5	Move the boundary of the pane leftwards by 5 lines. Direction flags: -U upwards -D downwards -L leftwards -R rightwards
M # M: meta key; ALT for Linux, ESC for macOS#: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5	Splitting panes in a designated form: #=1: uniform vertical split #=2: uniform horizontal split #=3: horizontal split, main pane on top, others on bottom, vertically split, all same width #=4: vertical split, main pane left, others right, horizontally split, all same height #=5: tile, new panes on bottom, same height before same width

Tmux Copy Mode

You can copy and paste text content in Tmux under Copy Mode. The buffer in Tmux is its clipboard and buffer_0, buffer_1, etc. correspond to clipboard items copied from a Tmux session.

Tmux Configuration

You can configure Tmux via the ~/.tmux.conf file. If it doesn’t exist, create it:

$ touch ~/.tmux.conf

To reload Tmux with the new settings:

$ tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

Custom Keystrokes

Add these commands to ~/.tmux.conf to modify Tmux function keys. Each command spans two lines. The unbind command deactivates the default key combination.

Making Tmux Copy Mode to default to vi keys

Customization

The following commands are for customizing the status bar at the bottom of a Tmux window:

Command	Description
set -g status-justify [left|centre|right]	Aligns the names of Tmux windows left/center/right
set -g status-left '...'	Replaces name of current session with ‘...’  in status bar
setw -g window-status-format `#[fg=white,bg=black]#I`	Formats the window names as follows: Default window formatting: Variables: #I: window index #S: session name #W: window name

For detailed formatting instructions: man tmux > /STYLES > keep pressing “n” key until you reach the section titled “STYLES”.

To reset Tmux to default settings, delete all lines in ~/.tmux.conf and run tmux kill-server. Close any running CLI terminals, reopen the terminal and start Tmux again.

Frequently Asked Questions

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