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Tmux vs. iTerm2 split panes

Tags:

vim

iterm

tmux

People also ask

Does iTerm2 use tmux?

iTerm2 is a very capable terminal application for MacOS. One of its best but probably least-used features is its native integration with tmux. Tmux is a terminal multiplexer. Simply put, this allows you to split one terminal session into many.

How do you split panes in iTerm?

iTerm2 allows you to divide a tab into many rectangular "panes", each of which is a different terminal session. The shortcuts cmd-d and cmd-shift-d divide an existing session vertically or horizontally, respectively. You can navigate among split panes with cmd-opt-arrow or cmd-[ and cmd-].

How do you split tmux vertically?

ctrl + b + % to make a vertical split. ctrl + b + " to make a Horizontal split. ctrl + b + left arrow to move to the left pane. ctrl + b + " to make a Horizontal split.


There is another advantage of tmux: what happens if you accidentally close iterm2? If you do it really by accident, you want to reopen everything again. With tmux it is normally as simple as reattaching session without losing anything. Most terminal emulators send SIGHUP to all children which terminates them by default and thus you lose unsaved data (at least, shell and vim command history and other data stored in viminfo) and running processes and thus reopening means rerunning everything.


iTerm2 can use tmux for it's split panes. Personally, I'm used to tmux by itself at this point, so I've not leveraged this ability extensively - but if you are used to iTerm2 split panes, you can get the benefits of tmux (mostly screen-like session saving) with the iTerm aesthetics.

https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/wikis/TmuxIntegration


My approach (not based on any particular insight) is to use iTerm tabs and panes to separate servers, and screen / tmux on the server to persist sessions.

I don't often have anything of importance running locally, but often do remotely.


Never used iterm2, however I have played with tmux a little and there are several articles about using tmux and vim together. These articles show how you can control a tmux session via the tslime plugin, and others, from Vim. What's nice about it is that you can run a command in Vim to compile your files, run unit tests, etc. without every leaving Vim, but you see the command run in the other tmux pane.

Apologies for not being a complete answer, but hopefully it helps point you in the right direction.

LINK: https://joshuadavey.com/2012/01/10/faster-tdd-feedback-with-tmux-tslime-vim-and-turbux/