In this post, I collect some useful tips for using Tmux.

In the following text, <prefix> means the prefix key for Tmux. If you haven’t changed it, it will Ctrl-b by default.

Change layout#

To change the layout of panes in a Tmux windows, press <prefix><space>. It will change between different layouts.

We may also use command select-layout (or selectl for short) instead. Possible layouts are: even-horizontal, even-vertical, main-horizontal, main-vertical, tiled.

Ref:

• How to convert 2 horizontal panes to vertical panes in tmux?

zoom a pane#

To temporarily zoom in and zoom out a pane, press <prefix>z. It will toggle the zoom state of current pane.

Create a pane that spans window width#

I have two vertical pane side by side in a window, and I want to create a new pane above these two panes, which will span the entire window width. Essentially, I want to change from the following layout:

+--------------+--------------+
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
+--------------+--------------+

to the below layout:

+-----------------------------+
|                             |
+--------------+--------------+
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
|              |              |
+--------------+--------------+

By default, split-window command only spans the width of current pane. We can use the -f option to make the new pane span the entire window width. The help for -f says that:

-f – create new pane spanning full window width or height

To make the new pane created above, we need to use -b option:

-b – create new pane left of or above target pane

Combining the two options, we can use the following command to create what we want:

# run the command after pressing <prefix>
:split-window -fbv

Similarly, if we have two pane one on the other, we want to create a new pane, and get the following layout:

+-----------------+-----------+
|                 |           |
|                 |           |
|                 |           |
+-----------------+           |
|                 |           |
|                 |           |
|                 |           |
+-----------------+-----------+

we can use the following command:

Ref:

• How to add a horizontal split to tmux window that spans the whole width of the parent window?

swap two panes#

To swap two panes in Tmux, first we need to check their index: press <prefix> + q to show the pane index. Then we can use the tmux command swap-pane to swap the two panes (tmux command mode are activated by pressing <prefix>, followed by :). For example, if we want to swap pane 0 with pane 2, use the following command:

Ref:

• How does one swap two panes in Tmux?

equalize two panes#

To make two panes have the same width in side by side position, press <prefix> Alt-1 or run command select-layout even-horizontal. To make two panes have the same height and in top-down position, press <prefix> Alt-2 or run command: select-layout even-vertical.

Ref:

• How do I equally balance tmux(1) split panes?