How to scroll with mouse in tmux (not history, but terminal output)

Question

This seemingly simple question, is one I cannot find an answer to. The solutions suggesting adding

setw -g mouse on

into the config, do not work. Yes, the mouse works, but on history. Not on the shell output. I cannot understand the logic behind this... why is this the default? Lets say I issue an ls command. I need to scroll to see the entire output, but tmux prevents this.

EDIT:

I would also like to know why is this the default behavior? What prevents it from behaving like other terminals do?

Answer 1

Two items to be aware of:

Regarding the comment that you posted

1. setw -g mouse on

   ^ Works on my machine; I am guessing it fails in your config.

   To test locally: go to tmux and type:

   <leader> colon

   For my setup that is ctrl b :

   That puts you in command mode.

   Now paste: setw -g mouse on

   Use the same process to toggle it off setw -g mouse on and verify that there is a difference.

If your problem still is not solved: (at-least on a mac terminal) Try step #2

2. Ensure that mouse reporting is checked

   See image:

Hope that helps, your question helped me with my configs. :)