Tmux Setup with Vim

Tmux is an incredible tool. It’s useful for:

  • creating/resizing/moving terminal panes and windows
  • executing long-running processes on servers over SSH, then coming back later to see how they did
  • sharing a terminal sessions with remote team members while paired programming

And it can do all of this on just the home row. Very cool. Unfortunately, it’s a little tricky to get Tmux set up with Vim. Here’s how I did it on OSX with iTerm. Note: some of what follows presupposes that you have configured vim as I have. For more details, check out my vim installation instructions in my dotfiles.

Installation

First the boring part:

brew update
brew install tmux
brew install reattach-to-user-namespace
# optional -- adds a battery meter to tmux status bar
brew tap Goles/battery && brew install battery

Configuration

Now the fun part: customization!

You’ll want to create some tmux configuration files. You can view mine here and here. To make things easy, I’ll paste the most important bits:

# put this in ~/.tmux.conf

# make CNTL-s your prefix key
unbind C-b
set -g prefix C-s

# prevent vim coloring from getting messed up
set -g default-terminal 'screen-256color'

# switch between panes like vim with CNTL+h/j/k/l
setw -g mode-keys vi
bind h select-pane -L
bind j select-pane -D
bind k select-pane -U
bind l select-pane -R
bind-key -r C-h select-window -t :-
bind-key -r C-l select-window -t :+

# Copy from tmux into OSX clipboard
bind-key -t vi-copy v begin-selection
bind-key -t vi-copy y copy-pipe "reattach-to-user-namespace pbcopy"

# vim-like opening of panes
bind-key - split-window -v -c '#{pane_current_path}'
bind-key / split-window -h -c '#{pane_current_path}'

# resize panes
bind -n S-Left resize-pane -L 2
bind -n S-Right resize-pane -R 2
bind -n S-Down resize-pane -D 1
bind -n S-Up resize-pane -U 1

# Smart pane switching with awareness of vim splits
is_vim='echo "#{pane_current_command}" | grep -iqE
"(^|\/)g?(view|n?vim?)(diff)?$"'
bind -n C-h if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-h" "select-pane -L"
bind -n C-j if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-j" "select-pane -D"
bind -n C-k if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-k" "select-pane -U"
bind -n C-l if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-l" "select-pane -R"
bind -n C-\ if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-\\" "select-pane -l"

Don’t forget to source your tmux config files! From the terminal:

tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

Finally, you’ll need to make sure iTerm’s color preferences are correct. Go to
iTerm > Preferences > Profiles > Terminal
and set Report Terminal Type to xterm-256color. Otherwise vim’s color scheme will get messed up in tmux.

And, last but not least, here are some tmux commands that I found useful when getting started.

Thanks to …

thoughtbot for sharing their awesome vim and tmux configs!