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Tmux,
a terminal multiplexer, is a superpower for developers.
If you spend a sensible amount of time in the terminal, this tool will make your life way easier.
Why Multi-tabs terminal sucks
To work on multiple projects, you will need multiple ongoing terminal sessions.
Managing them is painful:
Each terminal session lives in a different tab
You forget which tab is doing what
If you close it, the session is just gone
This has been a continuous pain. Until recently, I discovered Tmux.
The Tmux Appeal
Essentially, Tmux allows you to:
Create this cool layout.
What? You ask if there’s a practical use case for it? I guess you can run your database, React app, and Node server in 1 single tab instead of juggling between 10.
Create sessions that run permanently
Tmux processes survive terminal shutdowns.
So, if you use Tmux on a remote machine, even if the SSH connection fails, your work sessions will be saved.
Once you've tried Tmux, it’s impossible to go back.
So, here’s a quick start guide on how to use it.
Tmux Hands-On Guide
After you installed Tmux, run this command:
tmuxA bottom status bar appears.
You have entered a Tmux session.
Tmux is like a terminal inside a terminal.
You can do all the regular stuff you normally would.
What’s different is that you can run Tmux commands.
Tmux Commands
The specific step to run a Tmux command is:
Press Control B (C-b)
Press a keybinding
Example: we want to create a new pane:
press C-b
press “
Which produces this layout.
C-b is a prefix. It tells Tmux we want to run a command instead of typing in the terminal.
Panes: The hacker layout
To split the pane vertically, press C-b %.
Combining these two commands, you can create the layout I’ve shown you previously.
You can run a different program in all these panes.
To switch between panes:
C-b <arrow-key>
Pane is not the only way to run multiple processes in one Tmux session.
There’s a second way called Windows.
Windows
To create a new window, press C-b c
Again, you can run something new here.
Switching between windows is easy.
See this bar here?
It shows all the windows you created in this session. To go back to the previous one:
C-b <index>. For example, to go back to the first one, press C-b 0
To visualize the relationships between session, window, and pane:
Sessions
Lastly, exit the session by pressing Control B, D.
Use tmux ls to see all the sessions you created.
To go back to the most recent session, run
tmux attachAll the processes are still there and active.
In fact, even if you had force-quit the terminal, the Tmux processes will still be up and running.
The fastest-growing repo on GitHub is a one person team!
OpenClaw went from 9K to 185K GitHub stars in 60 days — the fastest-growing repo in history.
Their docs? One person, plus Claude. They scaled to the top 1% of all Mintlify sites, shipping 24 documentation updates a day.
To recap:
Tmux improves your productivity by making managing multiple terminal sessions easier
Tmux processes survive terminal shutdowns
Tmux commands start with C-b
You can use panes and windows to run multiple processes at the same time
You can detach and reattach to Tmux sessions easily
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