A beginner’s guide to Tmux: a multitasking superpower for your terminal

of the brand new issues I’ve come throughout just lately, whereas researching command-line-based coding assistants, is the point out and use of a instrument I hadn’t heard of earlier than. That instrument known as Tmux, which stands for Terminal Multiplexer. 

Within the easiest potential phrases, Tmux means that you can break up up a single terminal window into a variety of separate home windows and panes, every of which is a terminal in its personal proper. Adoption of instruments like Tmux has surged, largely because of the agent staff workflows present in command-line coding agent merchandise like Claude Code. I point out Claude Code right here, however all of its important opponents, akin to Google’s Gemini CLI and OpenAI’s Codex, both have already got or can be engaged on their very own equivalents.

The purpose is that, in instruments like Claude Code, when it creates a number of brokers to hold out work, it could assign every agent to its personal window pane. These visible clues make it a lot, a lot simpler ( for people) to maintain observe of what’s going on as your agentic workloads progress. 
Claude Code will spin up as many separate terminal window panes as wanted, assign every agent a pane, and routinely shut every pane because the agent completes its work. And in lots of circumstances, it’s utilizing Tmux for this terminal administration.

Because it’s doubtless that an increasing number of workloads sooner or later can be carried out with a number of brokers, you’ll in all probability see and use Tmux extra usually. So, I believe it is smart to study a bit extra about what Tmux is and what it could do exterior of simply coding platforms. For the remainder of this text, I’ll clarify learn how to obtain Tmux and present some typical operations you are able to do with it. I’m solely going to cowl a very powerful ideas and can add a hyperlink to the Tmux GitHub house web page on the finish so you may dive deeper if you’d like.

Be aware: aside from being a person of them, I’ve no affiliation or affiliation with any of the merchandise or corporations talked about on this article

Tmux Licensing

Tmux is open supply and fully free to make use of. Every supply code file within the repo has the next licence hooked up.

Putting in Tmux

Relying in your working system, you may set up Tmux in one of many methods under.

macOS The simplest method to set up tmux on macOS is by way of Homebrew. Open your terminal and run:

brew set up tmux

Ubuntu / Debian / Linux Mint
On Debian-based distributions, use the apt package deal supervisor:

sudo apt replace
sudo apt set up tmux

Fedora / CentOS / RHEL
For distributions utilizing dnf or yum:

sudo dnf set up tmux

Home windows
I’m a Home windows person, however sadly, Home windows doesn’t assist Tmux natively however you can run it by way of the Home windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). To do this,

• Set up a WSL Linux distribution (like Ubuntu) from the Microsoft Retailer.
• Open the WSL terminal.
• Use the Ubuntu command: sudo apt set up tmux.

Key Tmux phrases it is best to perceive

These are the foundational concepts of tmux, and nearly all the things else builds on them.

• Classes. Persistent workspaces that survive disconnects. You possibly can detach and reattach later.
• Home windows: These are your digital desktops. You might need one window devoted to “Coding” and one other for debugging.
• Panes. Sub-windows inside a window. They are often oriented both vertically or horizontally. Every pane is a mini command-line terminal in its personal proper.

One of many key benefits of Tmux is you can connect and detach classes. Once you detach a session, no matter it’s operating will stay operating within the background, and while you re-attach to the session, you’ll see the up to date state of regardless of the session was already doing. 

Verifying your Set up

As soon as the set up is full, you may confirm that it’s working by checking the model:

$ tmux -V

tmux 3.2a

Beginning a Tmux session

The “hiya world” of utilizing Tmux is just beginning a session.

$ tmux

Nothing a lot will change, however you’ll discover a inexperienced standing bar seem on the backside of your terminal window, indicating that you’re now inside a tmux session. You possibly can kind in common working system instructions from right here. For instance checklist all my directories,

Inside a Tmux window or pane, you may checklist all of your classes utilizing the command:

$ tmux ls

0: 3 home windows (created Tue Feb 10 18:22:12 2026)
2: 1 home windows (created Tue Feb 10 19:11:12 2026)
3: 1 home windows (created Wed Feb 11 10:42:16 2026) (hooked up)
session2: 2 home windows (created Tue Feb 10 18:29:23 2026)

To kill classes, kind one of many following,

# To kill a selected session:
$ tmux kill-session -t [session_name_or_number]

# Or ... to kill EVERY session (The "Nuke" possibility):
$ tmux kill-server

Executing Tmux built-in instructions

Tmux depends on a “prefix” key mixture to execute its built-in instructions. By default, that is Ctrl + b, adopted normally by a single character. Listed here are some examples of frequent instructions you’ll use usually.

Motion                     Command
-------                    -------------------------
Break up display vertically    Ctrl + b then %
Break up display horizontally  Ctrl + b then """
Transfer to a different pane       Ctrl + b then Arrow Keys
Kill present window        Ctrl+b then &
Exit tmux                  Ctrl + then d

Instance 1 – Creating new panes

So, having began a Tmux session as above, strive typing Ctrl+b adopted by the per cent character (%) to separate your unique window vertically into two panes. It is best to see one thing like this.

Now kind Ctrl+b adopted by the double quote (“) character, and it is best to see that the brand new pane has now been break up horizontally like this,

Be aware that the “identify” of your present window is at all times displayed within the standing bar on the backside of the display. By default, these are merely numbered sequentially ranging from 0, however you may rename them if you’d like.

To shut down the lively pane, kind the command Ctrl+b adopted by the x character. On the standing bar, you’ll see a immediate asking you to substantiate the operation.

Instance 2 – Creating new Home windows

To create a brand new window, kind Ctrl+b adopted by the character c. The brand new window will overlay and obscure any present Tmux home windows you’ve gotten displayed. However take a look at the standing bar, and you will note it shows all of your window names. To modify between completely different home windows, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+b adopted by the n (or p) character to go to the following (or earlier) window. You too can swap to a selected window quantity by typing its quantity in as an alternative of n (or p)

To shut down a window, kind the Ctrl+b command adopted by the ampersand (&) character. The standing bar will show a immediate asking you to substantiate the operation.

Instance 3 – Shifting between panes and enabling the mouse

Okay, you created a bunch of panes inside a window. Say you want to transfer between them. By the way, observe that your present pane is bordered in inexperienced, so that you at all times know which one has focus. 

There are two methods to do that. Through the keyboard, you may kind Ctrl+b adopted by an acceptable arrow key. Be aware that you could key on this sequence each time you wish to transfer panes.

Utilizing the keyboard like this on a regular basis to maneuver round can change into tiresome, however there’s a method to make use of the mouse as an alternative. To allow the mouse, you may kind Ctrl+b adopted by the colon (:) character. The underside bar of your display ought to flip a distinct color, and also you’ll see a colon immediate. Sort within the following,

: set -g mouse on

After that, it is best to have the ability to swap between panes together with your mouse simply by left-clicking on them. When you have a number of home windows open, you may as well transfer between them by left-clicking on the suitable window identify in your standing bar.

Instance 4 – The Tmux configuration file

The way in which we arrange the mouse within the earlier instance was accomplished on a per-session foundation. This implies after we shut down Tmux and re-open it, the mouse setting can be gone. To keep away from having to arrange issues like this each time you begin Tmux, you may put them in a configuration file in your own home listing referred to as .tmux.conf. Like this,

echo "set -g mouse on" > ~/.ftmux.conf

To use the change instantly with out restarting Tmux, run this inside a Tmux terminal: 

Ctrl + b then : then kind source-file ~/.tmux.conf.

In any other case, the following time Tmux begins, it routinely seems to be on your configuration file and makes use of it if current.

There’s a bunch of different settings you may put in your configuration file, so I recommend you test the Tmux doc hyperlink on the finish for a full checklist.

Instance 5- Detaching a session

That is the superpower of Tmux, however there’s not lots to it actually. You can begin a course of (like a giant obtain), “detach” from it, shut your terminal app, and it retains operating within the background, able to be displayed while you re-attach to it. To detach a session, kind Ctrl+b adopted by the character d. As soon as a session is indifferent, you re-attach by typing this into any common terminal command window:

$ tmux connect

Instance 6- Creating your individual Ctrl+b instructions

To create customized Ctrl+b instructions, use the Tmux bind command. For instance, suppose you wish to create a shortcut key sequence to allow mouse assist everytime you kind Ctrl+b adopted by the m character. Sort the next instructions in,

# get to the command line on the standing bar first
Ctrl+b :
# Now map urgent Ctrl+b m to show the mouse ON
bind m set -g mouse on ; show 'Mouse: ON'

Once more, this may activate the mouse ON key mapping for the present session solely. To make it accessible in each Tmux session, place the bind command within the .tmux.conf file.

echo "bind m set -g mouse on ; show 'Mouse: ON'" >> .tmux.conf

Instance 7- Miscellaneous suggestions

• Resizing a pane. Assuming you’ve gotten the mouse enabled, to resize a pane, merely left-click on its border with one other pane and drag left-right or up-down as required. If the mouse just isn’t enabled, kind Ctrl+b, then maintain down the ALT key while urgent one of many arrow keys.
• Getting assist. Show all Ctrl-b instructions by typing Ctrl+b adopted by the query mark (?) character. To exit this show, kind the c or ESC key
• Zooming in. When you have a number of panes open, urgent Ctrl+b adopted by the z character will make the present, lively pane fill the entire window. Urgent the identical key mixture once more will restore issues to the way in which they have been.
• The “The place Am I?” Flash. When you have a display filled with panes and also you lose observe of which is which, press Ctrl+b then q. Giant numbers will flash over each pane. Not solely does this present you the variety of every pane, however should you kind the quantity whereas it’s displayed, you’ll immediately soar to that pane and make it lively.
• Switching pane positions. To swap pane positions, click on Ctrl+b adopted by both an open or closed curly brace character ({}). This can trade the placement of the lively pane with one other pane within the window.

Abstract

I believe attending to know and utilizing a utility like Tmux is an efficient addition to have in your developer toolbox. That is strengthened by the truth that we’re beginning to see many code assistant instruments, akin to Claude Code, actively utilizing instruments like Tmux to show the progress of multi-agent processes. As command-line agentic growth workflows flourish, we’ll see extra of any such use case.

This text has solely scratched the floor of what the Tmux utility is able to. Instruments like this will take appreciable time to change into actually proficient with, however I believe it’s worthwhile to persevere. In case you do, you may look again and marvel the way you coped with out it.

To search out out extra about Tmux, go to its GitHub web page on the following hyperlink:

https://github.com/tmux/tmux