tmux tutor

tmux organises everything into sessions. A session is the outermost container — it holds windows, panes, and processes. Named sessions are easier to find and reattach to later.

tmux's killer feature: you can detach from a session and it keeps running in the background. Close your laptop, SSH back tomorrow — the session is still there.

Your "learn" session is still running in the background. Reattach to pick up where you left off.

Inside a session you can have multiple windows — think of them as tabs. Each is a full-screen terminal.

Window names like "0:zsh" don't tell you much. Give them meaningful names so the status bar is useful at a glance.

A window can be divided into panes — multiple terminals visible at once. Navigate to the "work" window and split it.

Add a second split in a different direction to build a multi-pane layout. If you split vertically last time, try horizontal now (or vice versa).

When you need to focus on one pane, zoom it to fill the entire window. The other panes stay alive — just hidden.

Remove a pane you no longer need. First unzoom if the window is still zoomed, then kill one of the three panes.

Practice the full window lifecycle. Create a temporary window and name it "scratch".

Now remove the "scratch" window you just created.

tmux settings can be changed at runtime through the command prompt. Open it, type a command, and press Enter.

• : set -g mouse on
• : set -g mode-keys vi

Copy mode lets you scroll, search, and copy text without a mouse. You will copy a marker string into the tmux paste buffer.

Capstone: put it all together. Build a workspace from scratch with a new session, named windows, and pane splits.

Sessions accumulate. Sometimes you need to kill one. Create two throwaway sessions, then kill only the first.

• $ tmux new -d -s temp1
• $ tmux new -d -s temp2
• $ tmux ls
• $ tmux kill-session -t temp1

When you have multiple sessions, you can switch between them without detaching and reattaching.

Control pane geometry. Create session "adv" with a "resize" window, split it, then make the right pane wider.

• $ tmux new -d -s adv -n resize
• $ tmux split-window -h -t '=adv:=resize'
• $ tmux attach -t adv

Swap the positions of two panes without moving yourself or retyping anything. Put identifying text in each pane, then swap them.

tmux has built-in layout presets that rearrange all panes at once. Add a third pane to "resize", then cycle through layouts.

Panes can be broken out of a window or joined into another. Create a "staging" window, break a pane from "resize", and join it into "staging".

tmux maintains its own paste buffers independent of the system clipboard. Copy text in copy mode and paste it back. Multiple copies stack up.

tmux has a built-in help system. Browse every keybinding, query options, and inspect the running server.

• $ tmux list-keys
• $ tmux show-options -g
• $ tmux info

Runtime settings vanish when the server exits. Put them in ~/.tmux.conf to make them permanent.

• set -g mouse on
• set -g mode-keys vi
• set -g history-limit 50000
• set -g base-index 1
• set -g status-style 'bg=colour235 fg=colour75'

The default split keys % and " are hard to remember. Bind more intuitive keys that look like the dividers they create.

• bind | split-window -h -c "#{pane_current_path}"
• bind - split-window -v -c "#{pane_current_path}"

Type the same command into multiple panes at once — useful for updating several servers simultaneously.

tmux's real power is scripting. Every command you have used interactively can be run from a shell script to build a workspace automatically.

• $ tmux new-session -d -s dev -n editor
• $ tmux split-window -h -t dev:editor
• $ tmux new-window -t dev -n logs
• $ tmux send-keys -t dev:editor.0 'echo EDITOR_READY' Enter
• $ tmux send-keys -t dev:logs 'echo LOGS_READY' Enter
• $ tmux attach -t dev

tmux really shines over SSH. Set up a real SSH server, connect from another device, and attach to a tmux session remotely. If the connection drops, the session keeps running — just reconnect and reattach.

Ubuntu / Debian:

• $ sudo apt install openssh-server
• $ sudo systemctl enable ssh && sudo systemctl start ssh

Fedora:

• $ sudo dnf install openssh-server
• $ sudo systemctl enable sshd && sudo systemctl start sshd

Arch:

• $ sudo pacman -S openssh
• $ sudo systemctl enable sshd && sudo systemctl start sshd

macOS:

Enable via System Settings → General → Sharing → Remote Login, or:

• $ sudo systemsetup -setremotelogin on

• $ tmux new -d -s remote
• $ tmux send-keys -t remote 'echo SSH_WORKFLOW_TEST' Enter

• $ ssh user@<your-ip>
• $ tmux attach -t remote

Capstone: build a multi-session dev environment from scratch using scripted commands. Two sessions, each with multiple windows and panes.

• $ tmux new-session -d -s backend -n api
• $ tmux split-window -h -t backend:api
• $ tmux new-window -t backend -n db

• $ tmux new-session -d -s frontend -n app
• $ tmux split-window -h -t frontend:app
• $ tmux new-window -t frontend -n tests

• $ tmux send-keys -t backend:api.0 'echo BACKEND_API' Enter
• $ tmux send-keys -t frontend:app.0 'echo FRONTEND_APP' Enter
• $ tmux attach -t backend