#Iterm2 split window install#
#Iterm2 split window software#
#Iterm2 split window windows#

Now that we’ve created our first session we can get a feeling for panes. The status bar can also be customized and I’ve seen some really fancy stuff around (upcoming calendar events, battery status, to name a few) but this is something we’ll leave for later.

#Iterm2 split window windows#

Apart from the currently opened windows (on the left) it also shows some system information like date and time (on the right). The status bar is an important part of tmux. This will create a new tmux session with a nice all-green status bar at the bottom: Starting Your First Sessionįor your first session simply start tmux with a new session:

#Iterm2 split window install#

Installationįortunately installing tmux is pretty straightforward on most distributions a simple sudo apt-get install tmux (Ubuntu and derivatives) or brew install tmux (Mac) should be sufficient. Simply open your terminal and follow the instructions. It will only cover the basic features which should be more than enough to get started and be productive with tmux. This hands-on guide will get you up and running with tmux pretty quickly. Let’s get our hands ready in the hands-on guide! Getting Started Think of tmux as an easier-to-use and a little more powerful alternative to Screen (obviously I’m being opinionated here).Įnough with the talking already. If you are familiar with GNU Screen this is nothing new. You see that tmux basically offers two big features: Window management in your terminal and session management. I’ll just start a new session for my new task and attach to the old session whenever I want to continue with my old task. Personally I find myself detaching from sessions when I’m switching context.

Not only for its window management features but also for the session handling. To continue your session simply ssh to the server again and attach to the running session.īut tmux is not only helpful when working on a remote machine. If you’ve ever worked with remote servers or a Raspberry Pi over ssh you can guess where this will be useful: When you lose your ssh connection the tmux session will simply be detached but will keep running on the server in the background including all the processes that run within your session. This is incredibly useful because at any later point in time you can pick that session up exactly from where you left it by simply “attaching” to that session. tmux will keep this session alive until you kill the tmux server (e.g. On top of that tmux keeps these windows and panes in a session. This allows you to have multiple terminal commands and applications running visually next to each other without the need to open multiple terminal emulator windows. Each pane will contain its own, independently running terminal instance. Behind this fancy term hides a simple concept: Within one terminal window you can open multiple windows and split-views (called “panes” in tmux lingo). Tmux’s authors describe it as a terminal multiplexer. If you’ve got 10 minutes to spare and finally want to be more proficient with tmux: read on! What’s tmux? This post will give you the same two minute introduction about tmux and its possibilities, followed by the typical 10 minute hands-on guide to set up and get to know tmux yourself. In the former case I’ll usually end up helping them installing tmux on their machine and will give them a 10 minute guide to learn the most important basics. After that they’re either hooked and want to try it themselves or they tell me to go away with my ancient neckbeard tools and just use iTerm2. I’ll proceed to give them a two minute tour about what you can do with tmux. Simply speaking, tmux acts as a window manager within your terminal 1 and allows you to create multiple windows and panes within a single terminal window. It’s tmux, a so-called terminal multiplexer. Usually this is the point where they will ask something like “WTF am I looking at?” and it’s my time to shine!īecause what they’re looking at is nothing less than the best thing since sliced bread. But every once in a while there will be a new team member who doesn’t know my environment. If they’ve worked with me before they know what they are up to. This is why my pair usually will be greeted by something like this: And since I love working with the command line I’ve spent quite some time doing (only sane! I swear!) modifications to my terminal environment that make working with the command line more pleasant and streamlined. Everyone’s got their own laptop and can set it up the way they like. Maybe it’s the hacker/wizard/neckbeard kind of feeling I get when using a terminal, I don’t know.Īt work we do lots of pair programming.

#Iterm2 split window software#

Seriously, I think there’s hardly any more productive and more versatile tool for a software developer than the terminal.