My pane layout for playing single player asymmetrical tic tac toe.

We both know why you’re here. You wanna refresh your memory and look up a few commands. I wrote this cheatsheet for myself so that I could do the same. Make yourself comfortable. There’s a great book on tmux that you probably may want to check out.

The command Prefix

While we’re in a tmux session, we need to tell tmux that the command we’re about to send to it is destined for tmux indeed and not for the underlying application. The <ctrl+b> combination does just that. Since that is just a command prefix, you need to type in the actual command after that, hence why, in order to for example send a detach command, we need to press ctrl and b together, release those two, and after that press the command we want. People annotate it differently, I will stick to the C->d notation, where C is the command prefix, and whatever follows the arrow is the command.

Commands

Basics

• tmux - start a new session
• tmux new -s <session_name> - create a named session
• exit or C->d - detach from a session
• tmux ls - to list currently active sessionsA
• tmux attach to attach to a session that’s running (if there’s only one)
• tmux attach -t <session_name> - attach to a named session. (if you don’t know what sessions you have, run tmux ls)
• tmux kill-session -t <session_name> - self explainatory
• tmux new -s <session_name> -n <window_name> - create a session with a named first window
• C->$ - rename current session. alt cmd: rename-session -t <current_name> <new_name>

Windows

• C->c - create a new window (while in session)
• C->, - rename current window
• C->n, C->p - next window, previous window, respectively
• C->[0..9] - select a window by number
• C->w - display a selectable list of windows in the current session
• C->& - kill window with a confirmation message
• exit - while in multiple-window session, kill window

Panes

• C->% - divide the current window (or pane) vertically
• C->" - divide the current window (or pane) horizontally
• C->o - cycle through panes
• C->q - momentarily displays pane numbers in each pane
• C-><arrow_key> - move around the panes in direction of <arrow_key>
• C->spacebar - cycle through pane layouts
• C->X - close pane. alt: just type exit

Command mode

• C->: - enter command mode
• new-window -n <name> "<command>" - create a new window named <name>, with <command> running immediately