Tmux Fundamentals

The background process that manages all sessions, windows, and panes.

Your terminal that connects to the tmux server to interact with sessions.

A workspace containing one or more windows; you attach/detach from sessions.

Connect your terminal to an existing tmux session to view and interact with it.

Leave the session running in the background while disconnecting your terminal.

A full‑screen container inside a session, typically holding one or more panes.

A split region inside a window running a shell or program; multiple panes share a window.

A key sequence that tells tmux the next keystrokes are tmux commands (default: Ctrl-b).

The line (usually at the bottom) showing session/window info, time, and custom data.

Numeric identifiers for panes and windows used in commands and the status line.

Points a command at a specific session, window, or pane (e.g., -t session:window.pane).

Interactive prompt (opened via a key binding) to run tmux commands.

Navigable tree UI to quickly jump between sessions, windows, and panes.

A mode that lets you scroll history and select/copy text within a pane.

Temporary storage for copied text within tmux; can paste into panes.

Saved arrangements of panes (e.g., even‑horizontal, even‑vertical, tiled).

Temporarily make a pane full‑screen within its window; toggle to restore layout.

Send the same keystrokes to all panes in a window simultaneously.

Option that enables clicking to select windows/panes and dragging to resize.

Settings that control behavior/appearance; can be global, per‑session, per‑window, or per‑pane.

Startup config file where you set options, key bindings, and plugins.

External script or tool that extends tmux functionality (e.g., TPM for managing them).

Named sets of key bindings that tmux switches between (e.g., root, copy-mode).

A special mode that allows external programs to control tmux programmatically, sending commands and receiving output.

Triggers that run commands when events occur (e.g., client-attached, pane-died).

Placeholders used to display tmux metadata in messages, status lines, and scripts.

Notifications when a pane has activity, a bell event, or prolonged silence.