tmuxtutor.panes

Working with panes

Windows are nice, but often you want to see several windows at the same time; for viewing log files, showing the output of your test suite, manage your git commits etc.

For that, tmux has panes inside of windows.

Splitting a window into two panes is easy. To split vertically, type

  PREFIX + %

To split horizontally, use

  PREFIX + " (double quote)

So now create a new pane by PREFIX + %. The new pane is automatically focused.

To navigate, you can use the arrow keys. So to go back to this pane, type

  PREFIX + Left

To quickly navigate between two panes, use

  PREFIX + ;

Remember:

  Last window: PREFIX + l
  Last pane:   PREFIX + ;

To go to the next pane, type

  PREFIX + o

Remember you can always type

  PREFIX + ?

to get a list of all keys.

To see all pane numbers, and to navigate to a pane, type

  PREFIX + q

You will see a number displayed in every pane for two seconds. The active one is displayed in red. You can then type in the number to navigate to that pane.

Move panes around

To swap a pane with the previous/next one, type

  PREFIX + {
  PREFIX + }

Zooming panes

Now, let's say you have two vertical panes, so they have only half of the size of your terminal. This can sometimes be problematic.

You'll notice that you cannot copy content from just one pane. When you cannot use the tmux copy & paste, you want to be able to select content like you do in your normal terminal.

Or wou want to show a side by side diff with vimdiff and just need more space.

There is a shortcut for temporarily zooming into/out of a pane with

  PREFIX + z

Try it with this one here. To unzoom, just use the same key again.

Resizing Panes

You can resize a pane by typing

  # resize by 5 cells
  PREFIX + Meta-Left
  PREFIX + Meta-Right
  PREFIX + Meta-Up
  PREFIX + Meta-Down
  # resize by 1 cell
  PREFIX + Ctrl-Left
  PREFIX + Ctrl-Right
  PREFIX + Ctrl-Up
  PREFIX + Ctrl-Down

Closing panes

Just like for windows, there's a command to close a pane:

  PREFIX + x