tmux commands: the cheat sheet you'll actually remember

Every tmux command is either a shell command (tmux something) or a key binding pressed after the prefix, which is Ctrl-b unless you changed it. That single distinction explains most of the confusion beginners have, so it is worth stating before the tables: tmux kill-session and Ctrl-b then x are the same kind of thing, typed in two different places.

This is the reference I actually keep open, grouped by intent rather than alphabetically.

The prefix key, and why everything hangs off it#

tmux reserves one chord so the other several hundred keys can still reach the program running inside your pane. That chord is the prefix. Out of the box it is Ctrl-b.

You press the prefix, release it, then press the command key. Ctrl-b c is "prefix, then c" — not a three-key chord.

Most people remap it to Ctrl-a because it is easier to reach:

unbind C-b
set -g prefix C-a
bind C-a send-prefix

That last line matters: it lets you send a literal Ctrl-a through to the shell (where it means "start of line") by pressing it twice.

Session commands#

A session is the top-level container. It survives your terminal closing, which is the entire reason tmux exists.

And the key bindings for the same operations, once you are already inside:

The one to internalise is prefix d. Detaching is not quitting: your processes keep running, and tmux attach puts you back exactly where you were — attaching has its own sharp edges once two clients are involved.

Window commands#

Windows are tabs inside a session.

Naming windows is the highest-value habit here. prefix , and typing api costs two seconds and saves you from a status bar reading 0:zsh 1:zsh 2:zsh.

Pane commands#

Panes are splits within a window.

The mnemonic for the splits is that % looks like a vertical divider and " looks like two stacked marks. If that does not stick, rebind them to something that does — see the tmux tutorial for a minimal config that sets these up from scratch:

bind | split-window -h -c "#{pane_current_path}"
bind - split-window -v -c "#{pane_current_path}"

The -c "#{pane_current_path}" part makes new panes open in the directory you were already in, which is what you almost always want and is not the default.

Copy mode#

Copy mode is how you scroll, search and select. Enter it with prefix [ and leave it with q.

If those keys feel wrong, you are probably a vim user and tmux is in emacs mode. Fix it:

setw -g mode-keys vi
bind -T copy-mode-vi v send -X begin-selection
bind -T copy-mode-vi y send -X copy-selection-and-cancel

Commands worth knowing for scripts#

These are the ones that make tmux useful from a shell script or a dotfiles repo, and they are where the shell-command form earns its keep.

capture-pane and has-session are the two that turn tmux from an interactive tool into something you can automate around. A dev-environment bootstrap script is usually just has-session || (new -d; send-keys; send-keys; ...).

The subset that covers 90% of real use#

If you only memorise ten, memorise these:

That last one is the real cheat sheet. prefix ? lists every key binding your config currently has, which is more accurate than any article — including this one — because it reflects your actual ~/.tmux.conf.

Reading a session you are not sitting at#

The commands above assume you are at the machine. The awkward case is the one where you started a long run, walked away, and want to know whether it finished.

tmux capture-pane -p over SSH works, and for a quick check it is fine — running tmux over SSH has its own failure modes worth knowing. What it does not do is tell you when something happened; you have to keep asking. If you would rather be told, mtmux attaches to the tmux server you already run and serves the same session to a browser, with a push notification when a pane goes quiet or a command exits.

Either way, the tmux commands stay exactly the same. Nothing above changes.