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"When I first started using tmux, I felt overwhelmed by the very poor default UI that it offers and the amount of options and shortcuts that I needed to know to operate it well and be productive. It took me several tries before I started to feel more or less comfortable with it. One of the things that stood out to me right away was how dreadful UI looked. Not only it felt uninviting, but it almost felt “gatekeepy” - if you don’t know how to use it in this configuration, then might as well forget about it."

EPendragon elaborate on this. It seems like you understand the shell enough to use it productively and customize it to be how you like it. The screenshot this quote is talking about looks like a shell? In what way is it dreadful, and in what way do your customizations make it not dreadful?

For example, it seems like a valid criticism that shells are not very discoverable and a prompt and blinking cursor can be intimidating to a noob, and that surely applies to tmux as well. But then changing the shortcuts doesn't really address that, does it?

To me it seems your article is either saying, "tmux is a pig, and here's me putting some lipstick on it," :) or the problems are not insurmountable, and the solutions are nice but not life-changing.

It's great that you like it better now, and we're all having fun chatting around it about how we configure our tools here on the Hacker News :) But I don't see why it's "dreadful". It's just.. computers, no? Tmux seems no more gatekeepy than any other aspect of computers. And I say this as someone who stopped using tmux a few years ago after getting super annoyed with it.

Hey, akkartik!

The initial experience where I saw a lot of elements on the screen without knowing what's what was a lot. And sure enough - a lot of it had to do with just learning how it works and what's what. But in addition to the UI that is unintuitive for the beginner, most of the keybindings either didn't make sense or were not convenient (talking about prefix).

For example, splitting panes in my opinion are much better done with | and - symbols rather than " and %. I can see what they were going for with double quotes and the percent sign, but IMO vertical line and a hyphen make more sense. I do not need to be actively thinking about which one should I use for a vertical vs horizontal split.

There was some aspect of "putting a lipstick on it" - for sure. Making it more pleasant to look at didn't improve function - just looks. I just think making your tools look the way you like and enjoy them will create a more pleasant experience and help you learn the tool faster too.

The dreadfulness did come from not understanding it completely and being a noob early on. Fixing the style and function also put me into a process of being intentional about learning how the tool works and adjusting things that I didn't like.

And you're right - it is not more gatekeepy that other tools per se. I was simply describing my experience and what I ended doing about that.

Thanks! I'm glad I asked, because there does seem something here I can learn from. I care very much about what makes a power tool with a high ceiling gatekeepy.

What were the "lot of elements" in the screenshot? Ignoring shell stuff, is it the bar at the bottom? Is it the "[0]" and the "0:bash*"? The "Macbook-pro" might seem familiar to someone familiar to the shell, who is used to seeing it in the prompt of an uncustomized shell. The date and time likewise seem obvious what they mean. Am I missing anything?

I think the keybindings being non-mnemonic there's only so much you can do about. Vim's hjkl were mnemonic on the VT-100 terminal, but keybindings outlast mortal hardware. So the ability to rebind is in some ways the best you can get IMO.

Zooming out, the best power UI I've been able to come up with is a combination of a Wordstar-like always-on menu showing common keybindings, and a command palette. Here are a couple of UIs I've made, I'm curious what you think of them:

https://merveilles.town/@akkartik/108766067153506592

https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/main/html/20210624-shell...

don't know if you used lotus 123 back in the day, but it was one of the best keyboard-driven interfaces i've seen. everything was done by navigating hierarchical menus, but the menus were displayed horizontally in a bar on the bottom of the screen, no popups to obscure the rest of the display. so if you were a power user you would just automatically type e.g. /fs to open the file menu and then the save option thereunder, but if you were new to it you could look down, see that /f was file and when you hit that the bar would change to include s:save and you could hit that.

That's awesome. I never used Lotus, but it sounds like it might have had the same idea before Wordstar which influenced me.

yeah, it went one step beyond wordstar because the menus did not drop down and cover up your screen, the menu was all horizontal, so if you knew the keystrokes via muscle memory you never saw menus flashing on the screen. i think nano does something similar these days.

Ohh, I see. It wasn't just a static menu bar at the bottom, but some hotkeys were modes and the menu bar would update when you pressed them. Pico/Pine still has something like that where ^o used to stand for "other commands" and the menu would show new hotkeys when you pressed it. I don't remember if Wordstar had some escape hatch like that. It certainly had a lot of commands.

The article is focused on interactive use, but I would be interested to also hear from folks using tmux as a process manager / dashboard for server-type environments. I was pretty unenthused about this practice when I first encountered it, but it's grown on me as a way to quickly get a sense of state from onboard a running system without having to rely on off-board dashboard or log parsers / alert systems.

In particular, I'm curious about libtmux/tmuxp and how well it works to have a more declarative bringup than just a bash script launching things into the background and then attaching tmux windows to them.

And I guess the broader question of whether this approach is an evolutionary dead end— like does it just become a pile of hacks as one discovers the need for restart policies, backoffs, ordering, whatever other stuff that is built into a "normal" process manager like systemd or runit? If you do end up wanting to send process stdout/stderr elsewhere or do alerting, is that now annoying if those streams are "trapped" in tmux sessions vs being written into log files or the journal?

> I would be interested to also hear from folks using tmux as a process manager / dashboard for server-type environments

Sure! I use tmux on most of my OpenBSD systems and copy the same .tmux.conf file around, but rarely tweak it other than to set a hostname.

My status bar is at the top and looks approximately like this:

   --~ msg auth pf       hostname. Mon Aug 04 15:05

* The tilde window (~) is where I do stuff as root.

* The message window (msg) tails `/var/log/messages` and `/var/log/daemon`, or `journalctl -f` and `journalctl -k -f` on Linux.

* The auth window (auth) tails `/var/log/authlog` to monitor login attempts and usage of doas and sudo.

* The pf window (pf) runs a script to monitor the packet filter rules (pass, block, match).

* hostname is just the hostname. The period (.) means no mail, it turns to an exclaimation mark (!) when I have mail.

* Simple date/time.

This setup gives me quick access shells, important logs, mail status, date/time, and works the same on every server I manage. I add extra windows to tail other app logs as needed.

> but rarely tweak it other than to set a hostname

In case helpful: You can use `#h` in a status line string to get the hostname

I’ve seen people use this approach (and screen too) but personally I hate it for anything other than services that are interactive but you want detachable. Eg long running installs.

All the other examples I’ve seen where people have used it as a shortcut for daemonizing a service, it’s felt like just as much effort as writing a systemd service file.

I guess I could forgive people more back in the days of sysv-style initd. Writing those shell scripts was seldom fun. But with systemd, it’s literally a 5 minute task. And I say that as someone who dislikes numerous decisions made regarding the approach systemd takes.

yep, that's how roughly 99.99% of major minecraft servers are ran up to this day. (and I hate migrating them)

Systemd just does a poor job giving you a TTY on demand.

The best way I have found to use tmux is to unbind everything and set only the things I use for my workflow. Then the configuration (.tmux.conf) becomes the docs.

I was inspired by the "How to Configure tmux from scratch" post [1].

I came up with my use cases:

- I want to create sessions

- I want to open and close windows

- I want to create split panes

- I want to use vim-style text select

- etc.

Then I made mappings for the things I care about for my workflow specifically.

Before this, I would accidentally hit a keybinding while doing something else and not know how I got to that state, taking me out of flow to troubleshoot.

Afterwards, only the keybindings I have defined take action.

Now tmux fits like a glove. Because tmux is so stable, I haven't had to touch my config in years. It's worth the one time effort.

[1] https://ianthehenry.com/posts/how-to-configure-tmux/

I haven't strayed from tmux default configuration that much over the years (and these days, I don't even bother to alter it). The reason is that it's just another set of keybinding shortcuts to memorize, and if I forget some, the help screen is clone. But the few that are ingrained are guaranted to work everywhere.

I love tmux! Using it as a tool suddenly enabled me to do so many things. Lately I've been using Zellij, which I'd massively recommend for anyone not wanting to do a load of customisation. It just works great out the box (but probably has less wiggle room to "make your own")

https://zellij.dev/

I feel that “make your own” has been the major driver behind looking into the configs myself. Learning other configs feels like a chore. I would rather learn and make it as I go. In the end I will have a sense of complete ownership. I will know what needs to change if I decide to change it. I think investing time into making your own wins in the long run.

I will definitely check it out. Thanks for the suggestion! What would you say is different between tmux and Zellij, and why did you start using the latter?

If you've used Neovim vs Helix, I'd say the comparison is pretty close.

Tmux is more customisable, but a lot messier out the box. It's much older so has picked up a little cruft along the way.

Zellij is newer so has the benefit of being a clearer implementation. But it's designed as an "out the bix" experience, not one you can customise to your hearts content.

Edit: if you did want to try out zellij, I should point out there's a "no install, try in shell" option on their website's main page which is a super quick way to get a taste!

> Tmux is more customisable, but a lot messier out the box.

I have definitely felt that. Customization wasn't necessarily straightforward - just required some time spent reading the docs.

I appreciate the heads up about the "no install, try in shell" option. I will make sure to take a look!

Another ex-tmux user here: for it was text selection with mouse without extra line breaks, introduced by line wrapping when long strings are rendered.

I gotta admit that the initial experience in copy mode in tmux made me cringe a lot. The fact that scrolling up scrolled through the history of the terminal's commands was the most unexpected thing. After I enabled mouse use, it became usable for me.

@HNModerators, I don't know why it was necessary to change the title of my post from "Customizing tmux and making it less dreadful" to "Customizing tmux". The point of the title was not the overview of all of the customization options, but the effort to make it more usable, convenient, and pleasant to use.

It may have happened automatically at submission time. Otherwise, my best guess is that it appeared like an editorialized title.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

how is it editorialized? it matches the title of the article. removing part of that title is editorializing.

I have noticed that about an hour ago, so I don't think it was automatic. I guess I'm just curious why it was found to be against the guidelines or not representative of the topic in the post.

Setting a single key as my leader 10 years ago has been really nice. Personally it is back tick for me, but space is probably a good one too.

I use F2. Doesn't sound convenient, but it's just the right distance that when I reach out my middle finger hits it accurately.

I use F2 too. I can’t even remember why I started using it. I think maybe because KDE already had a similar binding so it because my de facto control pallet binding back before control pallets were a thing.

I use F4 and have a dedicated button for it nestled amongst my other modifier buttons.

For me, I use Spacebar as a leader key in Neovim, so I think they would conflict.

Does it ever create issues for you if you need to type the backtick in the terminal?

I found that Ctrl-A does a great job: it is conveniently located in relation to other keys that I need to interact with after I activate the prefix, and is in general easy to use.

Ctrl+A conflicts with readline's "go to the start of line" (unless you're using vim key bindings in your shell, which I find uncomfortable).

I've been using Ctrl+Q, it replaces an almost completely useless key combo (flow control if I'm not mistaken), and is easy to press.

I also use backtick for my tmux leader key. It doesn't create issues for me in the terminal (but you need to tap it twice when you want a literal backtick). This became natural for me pretty quickly.

Good to know. Thanks for the tip!

you could also use Oh my tmux!: https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux

I have checked it out initially. It hd a good set of defaults. I didn’t like everything that came with it, but I did read through its config file and borrowed a couple of lines from there into my own setup. IMO the problem with using a prebuilt config like that is that it requires you to learn all of its keybinds, styling, layout. I would rather build my own incrementally but have a sense of knowing everything that is going on in my setup.

I was sad to discover that not all string-like config items accept input from external processes. I had to resort to on-the-fly sed templating as a hackaround.

Glad that that it supports XDG though.

>I felt overwhelmed by the very poor default UI that it offers and the amount of options and shortcuts that I needed to know to operate it well and be productive

Typical Macintosh user.

lol, that's likely part of the problem :D

I have started using nvim about a year ago, and that one also took three separate tries before it finally stuck with me :) After that, about 8 months ago I found tmux and had a harsh "first impression".

These days I enjoy using both of those tools and get more excited the more I learn about them.

So many people miss the point of tmux.

The only reason to still use tmux (or screen) is because you use remote sessions. All modern terminal emulators are already capable of doing tabs and panes (okay, maybe not sessions, but some can locally). If you're using tmux for this reason, stop. Go pick up a modern terminal like ghostty, Alacritty, or WezTerm.

But why tmux still exists today is because people are working on computers they aren't sitting in front of. Because I don't want to have to be running nohup or detaching, moving to the background, and resetting the session so error messages don't appear in my active instance. Hell, technically I can do this with vim and get something pretty similar to tmux by using the terminal. But that's a pain.

Tmux is for *terminals*

I would mostly agree, but I like that I can use tmux locally and remotely and thus have the same interface wherever I do my work (and regardless of what terminal I use).

Then, there's the fact that some terminals capture too many keybindings and get in the way of some terminal code editors I'd like to use (e.g. recently I was again trying to use flow <https://github.com/neurocyte/flow> and its next-tab and previous-tab shortcuts clash with Ghostty's). If I had a terminal that 1) was nothing but a black box with the capability to display Unicode font glyphs and ligatures correctly, 2) works under Wayland, and 3) captures as few keybindings as possible, I'd use it locally with tmux and live happy.

  > I like that I can use tmux locally and remotely and thus have the same interface wherever I do my work

  > (e.g. recently I was again trying to use flow <https://github.com/neurocyte/flow> and its next-tab and previous-tab shortcuts clash with Ghostty's)

Like I use vim so frequently hit <C-w> while typing and when I'm not on mac I kill browser tabs (probably for the best lol). But the benefit of all CLI programs is the config. There's no "one-size-fits-all" solution, so having configuration is the next best thing.

  > If I had a terminal that

> I don't think I understand this example. There's only so many keybindings and clashes aren't uncommon.

That's precisely my point! Many terminals these days try to do too much and by default end up capturing keybindings that I want to use for something else. The terminal should allow me to do that something else, not get in the way. A simple terminal wouldn't get in my way and I could insert tmux in the more complex scenarios (even for local sessions). I know I can reconfigure most terminals, but not everything is configurable, plus everyone knows the best tools are the ones that don't require to be reconfigured to be great. :)

Thankfully my main editor is Helix and by default it doesn't clash with anything because it's a modal editor where commands are regular keystrokes and not key combinations.

> Foot is a barebones solution, so that might be good for you

I'm aware of foot, and it works fine, but it doesn't correctly display the fancy icons used by foot (and other programs). For a visual comparison, here's foot on the left, Ghostty on the right: <https://v1.imgpaste.net/images/public/21baee04-b4a5-4693-8a8...>

> I'm aware of foot, and it works fine, but it doesn't correctly display the fancy icons used by foot (and other programs).

These are icon glyphes. You have to set the font setting for the terminal to have them. By default, foot uses whatever you set for the monospace family (you can use the command `fc-match monospace` to find out which font). You may want to use a Nerd Font instead.

[0]: https://www.nerdfonts.com/

  > The terminal should allow me to do that something else, not get in the way.

I mean I really don't understand. Do you expect the terminal developer to know all the keybindings you currently use and will use in the future? That's a really big ask! Or are you asking that the terminal comes with no keybindings? I can understand that one, but I think it is not going to be popular. For most people that means more configuration. You can disable anything you don't like.

  > Thankfully my main editor is Helix

  > I'm aware of foot

Do you expect the terminal developer to know all the keybindings you currently use

i expect terminal developers to keep keybindings to a minimum.

come to think of it, i can't think if a single keybinding that i need from a gui terminal. the only keybindings i need from a terminal are those for tmux, so if a terminal replaces tmux (like wezterm is able to) then those are ok, but otherwise when i run tmux in a gnome terminal then there isn't a single key binding that i need for gnome, except possibly copy and paste.

Using tmux locally lets me use a single interface and interaction model for multiple sessions, regardless of whether they are local, remote, or a mix of both.

I'm not quite sure I understand your pattern. Can you explain it more so I can better understand? Maybe I'm missing something and I'm always looking to improve my workflow.

Locally, I don't get the point. I can do tabs and splits. A session? That's another window. I can also hide that and use keyboard shortcuts to navigate towards it. Am I missing a local benefit?

The session is the thing I use, and I do use tmux every day, but I exclusively use it when in ssh as on a local machine I have everything I need. You mention the hybrid, but isn't the point that the connection is ephemeral? We don't exactly want to keep it alive unless we are actively using the connection, right? This is what I'm not understanding about your mixed scenario. What is the difference between what you do and me just opening another pane in ghostty and doing the ssh there. I can't detach from ghostty, but I can save the window state (or move to a different window in a different workspace or just cycle through windows like I would a session) so when I quit it it resumes, but honestly, I rarely quit it. Keeping a remote connection alive while there's no active usage seems like a waste and it's just going to disconnect when I walk away from my machine anyways. So what is the difference?

I do find sessions tend to get unruley easily, and more easily than windows just do to being hidden another level deeper. It's not too bad when single user, but I'd still suggest organizing tabs over multiple sessions, in most cases. That's because it is easy to just leave something like an editor open and accidentally overwrite files. Someone just logs back in after awhile and types :x into vim (or :x!) without thinking. It's also just too easy to let sessions stale. I haven't worked with a single person (myself included) who did not have a tmux session that was inactive for at least a month more than their last login time. (Better than all the hanging VSCode sessions though) That's like people using srun to run slurm jobs instead of submitting a batch job into the queue. That's totally fine to do when you're sitting in front of the sim but if you walk away and the code errors or just ends before your session ends then you're just hogging a machine that could be used (there wasn't even a benefit to this either!). Locally, it's pretty much the same thing except locally I can do all my tabs and splits and sessions without tmux.

I always find it annoying to manage nested tmux sessions so I usually use Kitty's keyboard driven tab management and tmux for server side sessions.

I have a status line indicator to show whether tmux is in Control mode.

So, even when nested, it's always clear what will happen. One nested session (two total) is manageable. Adding another gets annoying, but the need is rare.

I've also tried the status line indicator but it's difficult to balance between being too visible and invisible. So just leads to doing the right commands on the wrong session. Though I find any nested session is rarely needed. I mean locally, a session is a window so I do that.

I haven't had a problem with indicator visibility, but I remember spending some time getting it to a place that worked for me.

Here's what I use:

  set -g status-left "#{?client_prefix,#[bg=colour76]^,#[bg=colour235]_} [#S]"
  set -g status-right ' | #[fg=colour76]#h#[fg=default] %H%M%Z'

I don't mean rendering of an icon so much as I mean that humans become blind to persistent things (and frequent things). Losing glasses on your head kinda thing. I don't find a mirror as helpful as having a fixed location to put my glasses when I'm done with them. Same strategy

But yeah, when I didn't have splits and things in my emulator I used something like you did. Make a remote section visually distinct. To a lot of extent I still do, just this isn't necessary through tmux anymore

It is interesting to see that you use tmux and Kitty together. Is it faster or more convenient than using just one tool?

> okay, maybe not sessions

Okay, but sessions are one of the best things about tmux.

Sessions aside, in my opinion tmux's flow is just better than terminal emulators I've tried. It slots into my brain in a way no terminal emulator's tabbing support ever has, and I have never found a terminal emulator who supported keybindings in such a sophisticated and seamless manner as tmux does.

I also concur with other commenters, who mention that having uniform multiplexing of shell windows between local and remote environments is super useful for muscle memory.

  > Okay, but sessions are one of the best things about tmux.

  > Sessions aside

  > uniform multiplexing of shell windows between local and remote environments is super useful for muscle memory.

> having uniform multiplexing of shell windows between local and remote environments is super useful for muscle memory.

Yep, this is why I use the same .tmux.conf on my servers and my local machines. I don't have to care about my terminal emulator - I might be using a fully featured Windows Terminal or iTerm, or I might be using xterm or st on some spartan system. My navigation works the same everywhere.

  > My navigation works the same everywhere.

Keybindings and uniform experience across machines is what does it for me.

> The only reason to still use tmux (or screen) is because you use remote sessions

Do you think it's possible that someone might have a different workflow from you and tmux fits their use case in a way you haven't thought of?

Yes, of course. What I'm trying to communicate is that if you're just doing things locally you can get all the benefits (sin sessions) from modern terminal emulators. Most people are using panes and tabs but switching to another terminal emulator will get you these and much more. If you're using the default terminal emulator, you should probably switch (you're installing a program anyways, right?).

That said, I still use tmux. Almost every day in fact. Because all my work is being done on a machine I'm not sitting in front of. This even includes at home. My main desktop is connected to a TV for videogames and movies. When I want to do work on it there's no difference if I'm sitting in front of my laptop or it other than it sitting in my livingroom keeps it cooler and gives it better air flow.

Edit:

Locally: my terminal emulator (ghostty) can do everything tmux can. I can do sessions (windows), panes, tabs, and all that. But with ghostty I also get images, a lower memory footprint (than stock emulator), lower CPU usage (than stock emulator), ligatures, and everything else. It is strictly better.

But I can't do {widows,panes,tabs} with remote connections. Hence, tmux. Which in that case, I will frequently give up capabilities (like images) for that.

You don't mention the persistence of tmux sessions, which I find very useful for local development. Does ghostty have a client-server architecture too?

You mean like `window-save-state`[0]? (Windows and sessions are the same thing)

You don't need a server to handle this feature. Using a non-server solution even allows restoring after power cycles!

[0] https://ghostty.org/docs/config/reference#window-save-state

I mean having long processes(batch jobs, backups, compiling, etc...) or even your opened terminal apps like your code editor or claude code don't get interrupted/killed if you accidentally close your terminal, or you terminal/desktop environment crashes/freezes. While essential for doing dev on remote servers IMO cause of "networks", is useful for local stuff too.

I love Alacritty, but it does not have tabs. You need to use, e.g., tmux for that. ZelliJ if you want the fully oxidized experience.

For me tmux ended up being the solution for my dev needs. With a little bit of time, I learnt the ropes and became more or less productive with the default setup. Afterwards, I made it my own.

Like you mention, tmux sessions was one of the biggest features that I enjoyed about this tool: it does the job and does it well. Aside from that I love that I can use Vim-bindings with it, that it feels very similar to Neovim for me, so using them together is a no-brainer. Learning a couple of specific keyboard shortcuts is all it takes to make me productive.

I haven't needed to use a remote session yet like you note. While working with tmux locally I have learnt about all of these other features that I will definitely be looking forward to using once the opportunity arises.

I don't doubt that tools like ghostty, Alacritty, or WezTerm are great. I have heard lots about the first two. And I do intend to check them out.

What would you say is your favorite terminal and why as it relates to local development experience use? Are there features that these tools have that tmux lacks?

  > What would you say is your favorite terminal

Btw, vim bindings should already be available in your emulator, without the need for tmux. You can set bash to use them (set -o vi) but I suggest migrating to zsh if you like using the cli. I'll also give you one fun command most people don't know. While holding control, press x then e (if you are already using zsh you might need to add `zle -N edit-command-line` to your rc file but <C-x><C-e> needs no config in bash). I guess I should also mention that in vim you can open a terminal (:help term)

  > why as it relates to local development experience use? 

  > Are there features that these tools have that tmux lacks?

Second, tmux lacks many of these modern features. Doing a passthrough can help but dealing with images is not a great experience. I have found no configuration where I can reliably view images and never have been able to produce images of the same quality. I always drop out of my session if I am entering a file browser like yazi or fzf (I'll use fzf but it limits the capabilities of previewing).

I feel compelled to reply, because a lot of this contradicts my experience. I use wezterm + tmux on linux, iterm + tmux on mac. (Already an advantage there, tbh)

> vim bindings should already be available in your emulator, without the need for tmux

They may mean things like the vim-tmux navigator plugin, which makes it so if you hit e.g. the left-most window in vim and hit your go-left keybinding, it will go one tmux pane to the left. It's pretty crazy how seamless it is, and it's made possible by the fact that you can query tmux outside of the process and run commands on your running sessions, which I'm not sure you can do with any of the standalone terminals?

Tmux also doesn't prevent you from using c-x e. I'm aware of the vim terminal, but I'm very picky about my multiplexing and have not been satisfied by any built-in terminal in any editor.

> You just have to remember that a session is the same thing as a window.

A session is certainly NOT a window. It is a buffer. There is a difference, and that difference matters and comes with advantages that are separate from the advantages of windows.

> First off, switch because your emulator is probably more resource intensive

I'm not entirely sure if this is true, but it's utterly uncompelling to me. Holding my binding for 'switch window' will switch through n windows faster than I can mentally digest, and the lag is lighter than any gui app I've used.

> It may also be missing modern features like being able to view images (see sixel, chafa, or the kitty graphics protocol), ligatures, and a lot of other features

I'm not sure why you'd assume this? My setup (wezterm or iterm + tmux + fira code) indeed has ligatures and sharp image viewing passed through the multiplexer

> Second, tmux lacks many of these modern features. Doing a passthrough can help but dealing with images is not a great experience. I have found no configuration where I can reliably view images and never have been able to produce images of the same quality. I always drop out of my session if I am entering a file browser like yazi or fzf

Yazi is exactly what I use, and it works great with iTerm + tmux or wezterm + tmux.

I really don't want my terminal to do that much for me to be honest. I change terminals every couple years, and it's nice to not have to fuss around with them whenever that happens. I haven't changed my tmux config in about 15 years

Appreciate the detailed answer! I will need to take a look at different terminals to see if there is any other one that can better fit my needs.

I prefer the idea of having one tool to manage everything: from local flow to remote sessions. And I usually do not view images in the terminal. But I'm willing to put them to the test and see if I like one of those more.

  > I prefer the idea of having one tool to manage everything: from local flow to remote sessions.

I'll add that your muscle memory will adapt to whatever pretty quickly. Like I was switching between a mac and a linux machine with a keyboard frequently and it only took a week to forget where my pinky needed to go to hit ctrl. Same is true even if your bindings for whatever are not identical local or remote (though mine are very similar, just differing in the prefix). So I'd say when testing things make sure you include a burn-in time, otherwise any change is going to make all other options feel worse.

  > I usually do not view images in the terminal.

I use ghostty and native splits, however there is no way to move a pane to a new tab. Which you can do in tmux very easily. That's one thing I wish it could do.

While this doesn't address that issue you can move a tab to a new window (session) as well as merge. I do wish this feature existed, but I use it so rarely that honestly I don't notice. Rarely are more than one pane essential in a given tab, so usually I solve this by cleanup. But yeah, I will acknowledge that limit.

When I was a Vim user, tmux was always the first thing I ran when connecting to a machine…

But the after moving to Emacs and using Tramp for remote sessions, followed by VS Code with its built-in session management, I never feel the need to even leave the editor let along manage sessions

How do you deal with persistent sessions in VSCode? I have a remote VM to which I connect through SSH using VSCode, but I need to have certain programs running even after I disconnect from the VM. It's the only reason why I use tmux and I haven't been able to get rid of it.

I just found out about https://stackoverflow.com/a/52838493

    Host myhost
      Hostname host
      User user
      RequestTTY yes 
      RemoteCommand tmux new -A -s foobar

This breaks rsync & many other things that rely on SSH as transport. Try:

  alias ssh="ssh -o RequestTTY=force -o RemoteCommand='tmux new -A -s foobar'"

Or just use a different myhost, like "t-myhost" (i.e. myhost != hostname)?

Which would require creating a couple of hundred (in my case) duplicate host aliases instead of adding one shell alias that can be used with any host, including those not mentioned in ~/.ssh/config.

You can resolve this with a conditional. See the `Match` keyword.

Though I agree, probably not the best solution to start all sessions with tmux. There's other issues it can cause.

For me the value in using a tool like tmux is that it remains scriptable - startup scripts - and could be used in conjunction with other cli tools. The same applies to Vim/Neovim. Both of these tools remain unrivaled in regards to combining them with other flows and pipelines.