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 want to earn street cred with your nerd friends: read on and become proficient with tmux! What’s tmux? This post will give you the same quick introduction to tmux and its possibilities, followed by the a 10 minute hands-on guide to set up and get to know tmux yourself.

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. This screenshot shows nothing less than the best thing since sliced bread. One of the most important tools to drive my daily command line experience is tmux. Over the years I’ve tried to streamline and customize my command line experience to be more convenient, more fun to use or just to look rad. The additional hacker/wizard/neckbeard kind of feeling you get when using a terminal comes for free, what’s not to love? I think there’s hardly any more productive and versatile tool for a software developer than the terminal.

Tmux windows