How can I bind a key to switch to last-pane, or if there are no panes, last-window?

Question

If I'm working in a widescreen monitor I like to primarily use two panes and switch between them with C-a Ca.

If I'm working on a square monitor I'll use two windows. I'd like to be able to switch between them with C-a C-a as well without changing my tmux.conf.

Answer 1

If you always want C-a to

• switch between panes when the active window has more than one pane, and
• switch between windows when the active window has only one pane,

then you can use an if-shell that counts the number of panes in the active window to decide between last-pane and last-window:

bind-key C-a if-shell 'test $(tmux list-panes | wc -l) -gt 1' 'last-pane' 'last-window'

It will still be “up to you” to rearrange your panes when switching between “wide” and “square” configurations (e.g. via break-pane and join-pane).

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In tmux 1.8 if-shell and run-shell do format expansion, so you can simply the shell command a bit:

bind-key C-a if-shell 'test #{window_panes} -gt 1' 'last-pane' 'last-window'