Complete tutorial on tmux commands with examples from scratch


Tips and Tricks

In this tutorial I will give a detailed overview on different tmux commands with examples and screenshots form my Linux server terminal. if you don't know this already tmux is an alternative to screen rpm, many Linux distributions such as CentOS 8 have already started dropping screen from their repository so it is between you start getting familiar with tmux commands.

We will cover below topics in this tutorial

  1. Installing tmux
  2. Learn about prefix key combination
  3. Creating session with windows and panes
  4. Attach and Detach sessions
  5. Create multiple windows
  6. Splitting panes (horizontal and vertical)
  7. Using tmux commands with shortcuts

You can also access tmux cheatsheet with 50+ shortcuts commands and key combinations

 

What is tmux

  • tmux is a terminal multiplexer
  • It is an alternative to screen utility
  • It lets you use a single environment to launch multiple terminals, or windows, each running its own process or program
  • For example, you can launch tmux and load up the Vim text editor.
  • You can then create a new window, load up a database console, and switch back and forth between these programs all within a single session.
  • You can divide your terminal windows into horizontal or vertical panes, which means you can run two or more programs on the same screen side by side.

 

Installing tmux

You can install tmux in one of two ways: using a package manager for your operating system, or building tmux from source. Whichever method you choose, you’ll want to ensure you install tmux version 2.2 or higher. Earlier versions of tmux don’t support some of the features we’re going to cover in this tutorial

 

Installing on MAC

The easiest way to install tmux on the Mac is with Homebrew. First, install Xcode through the Mac App Store. Once Xcode is installed, open a new terminal and run the command

$ xcode-select --install

to install the command-line tools that Homebrew needs. Next, install Homebrew by following the instructions on the Homebrew website.

Finally, install tmux with the following terminal command:

$ brew install tmux​

To ensure that tmux is installed properly, and to check that you have the correct version, execute this command from your terminal:

$ tmux -V

 

Installing on Debian and Ubuntu

On Ubuntu and Debian distributions you can use apt-get to install tmux

$ sudo apt install tmux

 

Installing on RHEL, CentOS or Fedora

On RHEL and other similar distributions such as CentOS, Fedora, SuSE you can use yum or dnf to install tmux. dnf is available starting with RHEL/CentOS 8 and SLES 12

# yum install tmux

 

Installation using source code

In earlier examples we used tmux in the form of rpm, you can also download the source code from official repository

$ ​​tar​​ ​​-zxvf​​ ​​tmux-X.X.tar.gz​
​​$ ​​cd​​ ​​tmux-X.6X
​​$ ​​./configure​
​​$ ​​make​
​​$ ​​sudo​​ ​​make​​ ​​install

 

The Prefix key

There is a special key in tmux called the prefix key that is used to perform most of the keyboard shortcuts. Its default binding in tmux is Ctrl + b. To get a feel for how this works, open tmux again:

# tmux

Then, inside of tmux, press Ctrl-b, then press t. A large clock will appear on the screen.

display clock with tmux session
display clock with tmux session

Press the Enter key to dismiss the clock, and exit tmux by typing exit.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
It’s important to note that you don’t hold all these keys down together. Instead, first press Ctrl-b simultaneously, release those keys, and then immediately press the key for the command you want to send to tmux. Throughout the rest of this tutorial, I’ll use the notation Prefix, followed by the shortcut key for tmux commands, like Prefix d instead of Ctrl+b d for detaching from a session.

 

Create your first tmux session

Let us jump in and start playing with tmux. Open your favourite terminal application, I will use Putty. On the terminal just hit "tmux" without any arguments (We will learn about tmux configuration and arguments later)

# tmux

You'll probably see a screen flash, and it'll seem like not much else has happened; it looks like you're right where you were previously, with a command prompt. The word tmux is gone, but not much else appears to have changed.

However, you should notice that now there is a bar along the bottom of your terminal window. This can be seen in the following screenshot of the terminal window:

tmus session name
tmus session name

That bar along the bottom is provided by tmux. We call this bar the status line. The status line gives you information about the session and window you are currently viewing, which other windows are available in this session, and more.

 

Rename existing session

Notice the [0] at the very left of the status bar in the snippet I added in the above section? This is the name of the session in brackets. Here, since you just started tmux without any arguments, it was given the name 0. However, this is not a very useful name, so let's change it to "tutorial".

To rename an existing tmux session we use "tmux rename-session <session_name>"

# tmux rename-session tutorial

Observe the status bar in the below screenshot

tmux rename session
tmux rename session

 

Create new named session

We can also create a new session with a pre-defined name using:

# tmux new-session -s test1

Alternatively you can also use

​​# tmux​​ ​​new​​ ​​-s​​ ​​test1

This would create a new session with name test1.

Assign name to tmus session

Enter "exit" to exit the session for now, we will learn more about it later in this tutorial

# exit

 

Detach and Attach to tmux session

Similar to screen, one of the biggest advantages of these virtual sessions with tmux is that you can detach a tmux session and leave your process running in the background

If you close a regular terminal session, all the programs you have running in that session are killed off. But when you detach from a tmux session, you’re not actually closing tmux. Any programs you started up in that session will stay running. You can then “attach” to the session and pick up where you left off.

Let's create a new session

# tmux new -s one

Press Prefix d to detach the session.

List the available sessions

# tmux ls
one: 1 windows (created Thu Jul 30 11:44:08 2020) [105x10]

Alternatively you can also use below command to list the active tmux sessions

# tmux list-sessions
one: 1 windows (created Thu Jul 30 11:44:08 2020) [105x10]

The command shows that there’s one session currently running:

one: 1 windows (created Thu Jul 30 11:44:08 2020) [105x10]

To attach to the session, use the attach keyword. If you only have one session running, you can simply use

# tmux attach

To attach to a defined session use:

# ​​tmux​​ ​​attach​​ ​​-t​​ <session_name>

 

Killing sessions

You can type exit "within a session" to destroy the session

# exit

Alternatively you can also kill a session kill-session command

# tmux kill-session -t one

Now list the available sessions

# tmux ls
no server running on /tmp/tmux-0/default

Since there are no tmux sessions running, tmux itself isn’t running, so it isn’t able to handle the request.

 

Working with windows

We have an option to create multiple windows within the same session. So we need not be creating separate sessions for individual processes. These windows will continue to function even if we detach the session.

Let's create a new session as "windows"

# tmux new -s windows

and open a dummy file for editing.

tmux windows
tmux windows

The status bar has a string that represents each window to inform us about the things that are currently running. So the text bash in our status bar just to the right of our session name ([windows]) has changed. It used to be 0:bash* and now it's 0:vim*.

 

Understanding the content in status bar

  • The zero in the front represents the number of the window. As we'll shortly see, each window is given a number that we can use to identify and switch to it.
  • The colon separates the window number from the name of the program running in that window.
  • The symbols ~ or vim in the previous screenshot are loosely names of the running program. We say "loosely" because you'll notice that ~ is not the name of a program, but was the directory we were visiting.
  • The symbol * indicates that this is the currently viewed window

 

Create more windows

So now we know the syntax used for windows in status bar, let us create new windows in our existing session. To create a new window within a session just press Prefix c and you will be presented with new window

tmux windows
tmux windows

Let us understand the status bar here

  • There is a new window with the label 1:bash*. It is given the number 1 because the last one was 0. The next will be 2, then 3, 4, and so on.
  • The asterisk that denoted the currently active window has been moved to 1 since it is now the active one.
  • The vim application is still running in window 0.
  • The asterisk on window 0 has been replaced by a hyphen (-). The - symbol denotes the previously opened window.

 

Switch windows

Now assuming you have created multiple windows but how will you move around individual windows?

  • Prefix n to go to next window
  • Prefix p to go to the previous window
  • Prefix 0 to go to the first window
  • Prefix 1 to go to the second window and so on..
  • Prefix l to go to the last window

If you end up with more than nine windows, you can use

  • Prefix w to display a visual menu of your windows so you can select the one you’d like
  • Prefix f to find a window that contains a string of text
  • Typing the text and pressing Enter displays a list of windows containing that text.
switch windows in tmux session
switch windows in tmux session

 

Rename windows

To rename a window, press Prefix followed by , (a comma), and the status line changes, letting you rename the current window.

rename windows-1
rename windows-1

Go ahead and rename the window to "win-2"

rename windows-2
rename windows-2
NOTE:
Once you assign a custom name to your windows, now it will not pick the name of the running process as earlier.

You can also assign a name to the window while creating your session using

# tmux​​ ​​new​​ ​​-s​​ ​​windows​​ ​​-n​​ ​​shell

So here we create a new session by the name "windows" and inside windows our first window would be named as "shell" instead of the default name "bash"

 

Killing windows

As the last to kill a window you can switch to your respective window using Prefix <Window_number>
Prefix & to kill it. You will receive a prompt to which you have to confirm that you want to kill it.
OR
Prefix x to kill it. You will receive a prompt to which you have to confirm that you want to kill it.
OR
You can Enter "exit" to exit that window session

 

How do I remember Prefix combination

That is a valid question. It is not possible to remember all these Prefix key combination so we can also use the help section of key bindings
Press Prefix ? to see your screen change to show a list with bind-key to the left, the key binding in the middle, and the command it runs to the right.

tmux Prefix combination
tmux Prefix combination

Press Ctrl + s and you'll see a prompt appear that says Search Down:, where you can type a string and it will search the help document for that string.

NOTE:
By default tmux uses Emacs for all the key combinations, but it can be changed to vi via configuration (which we will learn later). It may also be set to vi automatically based on the global $EDITOR setting in your shell.

So you can press ctrl+s multiple times to navigate around the key bind help section and look for the Prefix combination you are looking for.

 

Working with Panes

Now having different windows is one good idea but it still requires alot of moving around if something you have to constantly monitor. In such case we can split our session into panes so all the screens

 

Split the session into Panes

Based on the prefix combination you can split your session into horizontal or vertical panes

  • Prefix %, and the window will divide down the middle and start up a second terminal session in the new pane.
  • Prefix " (double quote) will split this new pane in half horizontally.
tmux splitting panes
tmux splitting panes

You can also use Prefix Spacebar to change to layout of all your panes

 

Move around Panes

You can use below prefix combinations to move around different panes

  • Prefix o To cycle through the panes
  • Prefix Up Arrow To go pane right above
  • Prefix Down Arrow To go to the pane right below
  • Prefix Right Arrow To go to the pane in the right side
  • Prefix Left Arrow To go to the pane in the left side

 

Killing Panes

We can use the same prefix combination to kill panes as we used for windows.

Prefix & to kill it. You will receive a prompt to which you have to confirm that you want to kill it.
OR
Prefix x to kill it. You will receive a prompt to which you have to confirm that you want to kill it.
OR
You can Enter "exit" to exit that window session

 

Working with tmux commands

We have used different key combinations with prefix to perform different operations. Sometimes it can become hectic to punch all these key combinations so we have a better alternative to use tmux commands

We can execute tmux commands two ways:

  • from the terminal itself
  • from the command area in the tmux status line.

To enter Command mode, press Prefix : (the colon) from within a running tmux session. The status line changes color and we get a prompt that indicates that we can type our command.

  • new-window To create a new window
  • split-window -v To split the window and create a new pane (vertically)
  • split-window -h To split the window and create a new pane (horizontally)
  • select-window -t :=0 To select window from terminal 0
  • next-window To go to the next window
  • last-window To go to the last window

By pressing Prefix ?, you can get a list of all predefined tmux keybindings and the associated commands these trigger.

 

Conclusion

In this tmux tutorial we learned about different sessions, windows, panes and tmux commands. This is just a beginners guide, tmux gives much more flexibility using configuration options where we can customize sessions, windows and all other configurable values. This is something which I will cover in my next article but atleast now you must be familar with the basic usage of tmux.

 

What's Next

Now that you are familiar with tmux basics, next you should go into the advanced mode by configuring tmux with customized options such as define your own prefix key combination, default editor etc.

10 practical examples of tmux configuration with examples

 

References

I have used below external references for this tutorial guide
learning Tmux

 

Deepak Prasad

Deepak Prasad

Deepak Prasad is the founder of GoLinuxCloud, bringing over a decade of expertise in Linux, Python, Go, Laravel, DevOps, Kubernetes, Git, Shell scripting, OpenShift, Networking, and Security. His extensive experience spans development, DevOps, networking, and security, ensuring robust and efficient solutions for diverse projects.

Certifications and Credentials:

  • Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
  • Go Developer Certification
  • Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS)
  • Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
  • Python Institute PCAP (Certified Associate in Python Programming)
You can connect with him on his LinkedIn profile and join his Facebook and LinkedIn page.

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