Tmux running with multiple panes.

Install tmux on Arch Linux

Tmux is a terminal multiplexer. This lets you to run multiple terminal sessions simultaniously. It gives you multitasking capabilities for your terminal and more importantly, this enables you to complete system updates even after a broken SSH connection since terminal sessions can be resumed.

Read more: tmux(1)

Installation

Terminal window
pacman -S tmux

Sane scrolling

The default scrolling behaviour runs through the previous commands instead of scrolling the terminal output. Enable sane scrolling behaviour with this config line.

~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf
set -g mouse on

Usage

Commands

Here is a summary of the most common commands that you’ll want to use.

Command Function
tmux Start a new session
tmux new -s name Start a new named session
tmux ls List sessions
tmux attach Attach to the most recently used session
tmux attach -t name Attach to a named session
tmux kill-session -t name Kill a named session

Key bindings

Tmux also have a lot of keybindings to help you manage all sessions and windows. Here are the essential bindings that you’ll want to learn. The default key combination to initiate a command is Ctrl+b / control+b.

Command Function
Ctrl+b ? List all key bindings.
Ctrl-b d Detach from the current session
Ctrl+b % Add a new pane to the right
Ctrl+b “ Add a new pane to the bottom
Ctrl+b % Split pane horizontally
Ctrl+b “ Split pane vertically
Ctrl+b o Switch to the next pane
Ctrl+b ; Move between the current and previous pane
Ctrl+b arrow-key Navigate between the panes
Ctrl+b x Ctrl+b x Close the current pane
Ctrl-b c Create a new window
Ctrl-b w Switch between sessions and windows

← Back to all posts