
title: Tmux basics
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body:

![](2015/08/04/tmux.png)

Discovered it not a long time ago (and now replaced with the experimental
version of iterm2 [because of goodies](https://iterm2.com/features.html)),
tmux deserves a lot of attention because it have lots of potential.

TMUX stands for Terminal Multiplexer. _It lets you switch easily between
several programs in one terminal, detach them (they keep running in the
background) and reattach them to a different terminal. And do a lot more._
Yeah, they sell themselves well.

For the novices, it lets you have panels (split terminals) and windows just
with some keybinds, detaching from them (so they keep running) and with the
possibility of storing configurations for certain tasks, in which you need to
open a running server and editor and some watcher at the same time, just with
a command.

For example, if you are like in the top screenshot, pressing `CTRL`+`b` `%`
`CTRL`+`b` `"` changes the layout to this:

![](tmux-horver.png)

And those numbers with a tilde at the bottom? The open windows. You can open
more pressing `CTRL`+`b` `c`, like this:

![](tmux-window.png)

This are the two basic things you will use everyday. Of course, there are
[more stuff you can do](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD-
current/man1/tmux.1?query=tmux&sec=1), but for the basics I will list the more
frequent keybinds here to start using it right now.

Meta key | `CTRL`+`b`
---|---
Split pane horizontal | `Meta`+`"`
Split pane vertical | `Meta`+`%`
Swap pane | `Meta`+`o`
Kill pane | `Meta`+`x`
Toggle focus on current pane | `Meta`+`z`
Show pane numbers | `Meta`+`q`
Press a the number of the pane you want to focus when shown.
Break pane into window | `Meta`+`+`
Restore window to pane | `Meta`+`-`
Change pane layout | `Meta`+`spacebar`
Create new window | `Meta`+`c`
Switch to window #x | `Meta`+`<number>`
Kill window | `Meta`+`&`
Next window | `Meta`+`n`
Previous window | `Meta`+`p`
List windows | `Meta`+`w`
Rename window | `Meta`+`,`
Find window | `Meta`+`f`

**Homepage: **[tmux](https://tmux.github.io)
**My tmux.conf:** [Github](https://github.com/fmartingr/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.tmux.conf)
**Cheatsheet by [MohamedAlaa](https://github.com/MohamedAlaa)**: [Tmux cheatsheet gist](https://gist.github.com/MohamedAlaa/2961058)


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pub_date: 2015-08-04
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_template: blog/post.html
