Tmux Starter

For the developers interested in turbocharging their terminal workflows without taking days or weeks of time to get started, I give you my Tmux starter.

Tmux starter is simple: it is a set of instructions and a basic, no-frills Tmux configuration file that will get you up and running with an ergonomic version of Tmux in no time at all!

Installation

Prerequisites

• Tmux (>=3.5)
• Linux, macOS (maybe WSL–I don't have a Windows device to confirm)

Steps

1. Clone this repository to your local machine

git clone git@github.com:alexandersix/tmux-starter.git

2. (optional) Back up your exiting ~/.tmux.conf file

mv ~/.tmux.conf ~/.tmux.conf.bak

3. Symlink or copy the .tmux.conf file to your home directory

# Symlinking keeps the file up to date with new versions
ln -s /PATH/TO/FILE/tmux-starter/.tmux.conf /PATH/TO/HOME

# Copying moves the file but does NOT automatically keep it up to date
mv /PATH/TO/FILE/tmux-starter/.tmux.conf /PATH/TO/HOME

4. Restart & run tmux, and enjoy the configuration!

Features

Sane Defaults

• Disallow automatic window renaming
• Start windows at index 1 instead of 0
• Increase tmux history limit
• Increase display time for tmux messages
• Set up "aggressive resizing" (a tmux session will always resize to match the smallest client currently connected to it)
• Allow mouse usage

Vim-specific changes

• Update color profile to work with Vim/Nvim background colors
• Remove Vim switching delay

Additional Keybindings

• Prefix r: reload tmux configuration
• Ctrl+{h,j,k,l}: move panes
• Ctrl+{H, J, K, L}: resize current pane
• Prefix \: split vertically
• Prefix -: split horizontally
• Pane navigation with awareness of Vim splits (thank you to Chris Toomey for this one! - vim-tmux-navigator)

Removed Bindings

• Arrow keys for pane navigation
• Prefix % and Prefix " for pane splitting

Overriding & Extending Defaults

As of v0.2.0, you can now more easily override and/or extend the existing defaults from tmux-starter. You can do this by creating a custom ~/.tmux/overrides.conf file and adding any settings and keybindings you would like to it. No more needing to stash your customizations before updating!

Create this file using the following command:

mkdir -p ~/.tmux && echo "# Place overrides here" > ~/.tmux/overrides.conf

License

MIT