Make tmux pretty and usable (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)

#71

Post by 0xDEFACED » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

my favorite thing to do with tmux is using a sessionizer script[0] (credit for the idea/original implementation goes to ThePrimeagen). allows for fzf-ing my projects and creating a separate session for each one. especially handy for bouncing around when working on features/fixes that span multiple repos

for (neo)vim users, flattening vim splits and tmux panes into the same level for switching with ctrl+hjkl is handy too

[0](https://github.com/tolly-xyz/dotfiles/blob/main/.local%2Fbin...)

Re: Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)

#72

Post by imiric » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

I've used ` as prefix for years now. Considering how often you switch windows/panes, I reckon using a single character has saved me hours per year. :D

It rarely conflicts with whatever I'm doing, but I have a binding to temporarily switch it to `C-a` and back, which I almost never use.

Oh, and I've used this themepack[1] for years as well.

Actually, here's my config[2] if someone finds it useful. I can't claim ownership of it, and probably stole it from somewhere I don't remember anymore.

BTW, the author's site https://rootloops.sh/ is certainly... something. :)

[1]: https://github.com/jimeh/tmux-themepack

[2]: https://gist.github.com/imiric/9bd3e5b7fc5e1468d05abc674f42e...

Re: Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)

#73

Post by kibwen » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

ndr wrote: post #57

TheTaytay wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can!

without running zellij on the remote machine? how?

I'm unclear what's being asked. Zellij is just a TUI-based terminal multiplexer like tmux and screen, you either run it locally and SSH within it to a remote machine, or SSH to a remote machine and run Zellij from within the remote connection.

Re: Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)

#74

Post by throwa356262 » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

himata4113 wrote: post #44

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.

Honestly, this is the only configuration I need.

Wish they could make this default, not sure why they haven't.

Re: Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)

#75

Post by esseph » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

faangguyindia wrote: post #52

wffurr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a totally different thing. Native macOS app vs portable terminal multiplexer. My main use case for tmux is detaching and re-attaching to a session on a remote server, for which it's extremely useful.

what does it add over screen which i don't even need to install?

If screen crashes you lose the sessions, Tmux maintains state.

Screen does not have UTF8 support, tmux does.

Otherwise just a bunch of more sane original defaults in tmux to make things much familiar.

In 2026 if given a choice between screen and tmux to use/learn, most are going to go with tmux.

Re: Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)

#76

Post by Morantron » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

One way to make tmux way more usable is to use tmux-fingers, which provides hint-based mouse-free copypaste capabilities

https://github.com/morantron/tmux-fingers

(disclaimer: I'm the developer of the plugin)

Re: Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)

#77

Post by johnfn » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

Guys, did you know about tmux control mode? It tells the host terminal to treat tmux tabs as actual tabs in the terminal. That means that things like scrollback, tab navigation, copy paste, keyboard shortcuts, etc are all handled natively, and you can visually see all your tmux tabs! It doesn't have great support across all terminals, but it does work great in iTerm 2.

Try `tmux -CC` in iTerm.

For a tmux novice like me, this was a total game changer :)

Re: Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)

#78

Post by post-it » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

adamors wrote: post #35

post-it wrote: post #27

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).

Select copies, what do you mean?

Not for me. Some kind of OSC 52 problem.

Re: Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)

#79

Post by himata4113 » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

throwa356262 wrote: post #74

himata4113 wrote: post #44

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.

Honestly, this is the only configuration I need . Wish they could make this default, not sure why they haven't.

xterm, probably

a lot of servers use tmux which probably has some weird broken edge cases

Re: Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)

#80

Post by cr125rider » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #46

alt219 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just `scp ~/.tmux.conf remotehost:`?

I can't speak for the parent, but I rarely login to the same remote server twice and don't want to need to set things up and clean them up anytime I do. This is why I try to keep my stuff as close to vanilla as possible. If anything goes wrong on a server and someone sees I have a whole bunch of dot files to customize my config, it becomes a red herring that I have to spend time explaining away.

If only we had ways to automate repeating processes… oh well