Tmux mastery

Author: Solène

Date: 05 July 2018

Tags: unix shell

NILTips for using Tmux more efficiently

Enter in copy mode

By default Tmux uses the emacs key-bindings, to make a selection you

need to enter in `copy-mode` by pressing Ctrl+b and then [ with Ctrl+b

being the tmux prefix key, if you changed it then do the replacement

while reading.

If you need to quit the copy-mode, type **Ctrl+C**.

Make a selection

While in copy-mode, selects your start or ending position for your

selection and then press Ctrl+Space to start the selection. Now, move

your cursor to select the text and press Ctrl+w to validate.

Paste a selection

When you want to paste your selection, press Ctrl+b ] (you should not

be in copy-mode for this!).

Make a rectangular selection

If you want to make a rectangular selection, press Ctrl+space to

start and immediately, press R (capitalized R), then move your cursor

and validate with Ctrl+w.

Output the buffer to X buffer

Make a selection to put the content in tmux buffer, then type

tmux save-buffer - | xclip

You may want to look at xclip (it's a package) man page.

Output the buffer to a file

tmux save-buffer file

Load a file into buffer

It's possible to load the content of a file inside the buffer for

pasting it somewhere.

tmux load-buffer file

You can also load into the buffer the output of a command, using a

pipe and - as a file like in this example:

echo 'something very interesting' | tmux load-buffer -

Display the battery percentage in the status bar

If you want to display your battery percentage and update it every

40 seconds, you can add two following lines in `~/.tmux.conf`:

set status-interval 40

set -g status-right "#[fg=colour155]#(apm -l)%% | #[fg=colour45]%d %b %R"

This example works on OpenBSD using **apm** command. You can reuse

this example to display others informations.