This plugin is a repackaging of Mislav Marohnić's tmux-navigator configuration described in this gist. When combined with a set of tmux key bindings, the plugin will allow you to navigate seamlessly between vim and tmux splits using a consistent set of hotkeys.
NOTE: This requires tmux v1.8 or higher.
This plugin provides the following mappings which allow you to move between Vim panes and tmux splits seamlessly.
<ctrl-h>=> Left<ctrl-j>=> Down<ctrl-k>=> Up<ctrl-l>=> Right<ctrl-\>=> Previous split
Note - you don't need to use your tmux prefix key sequence before using
the mappings.
If you want to use alternate key mappings, see the configuration section below.
If you don't have a preferred installation method, I recommend using Vundle. Assuming you have Vundle installed and configured, the following steps will install the plugin:
Add the following line to your ~/.vimrc file
Plugin 'christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator'Then run
:PluginInstall
To configure the tmux side of this customization there are two options:
Add the following to your ~/.tmux.conf file:
# Smart pane switching with awareness of Vim splits.
# See: https://github.com/christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator
is_vim="ps -o state= -o comm= -t '#{pane_tty}' \
| grep -iqE '^[^TXZ ]+ +(\\S+\\/)?g?(view|n?vim?x?)(diff)?$'"
bind-key -n C-h if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-h" "select-pane -L"
bind-key -n C-j if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-j" "select-pane -D"
bind-key -n C-k if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-k" "select-pane -U"
bind-key -n C-l if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-l" "select-pane -R"
bind-key -n C-\ if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-\\" "select-pane -l"
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi C-h select-pane -L
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi C-j select-pane -D
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi C-k select-pane -U
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi C-l select-pane -R
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi C-\ select-pane -lIf you'd prefer, you can use the Tmux Plugin Manager (TPM) instead of copying the snippet. When using TPM, add the following lines to your ~/.tmux.conf:
set -g @plugin 'christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator'
run '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm'Thanks to Christopher Sexton who provided the updated tmux configuration in this blog post.
If you don't want the plugin to create any mappings, you can use the five
provided functions to define your own custom maps. You will need to define
custom mappings in your ~/.vimrc as well as update the bindings in tmux to
match.
Add the following to your ~/.vimrc to define your custom maps:
let g:tmux_navigator_no_mappings = 1
nnoremap <silent> {Left-Mapping} :TmuxNavigateLeft<cr>
nnoremap <silent> {Down-Mapping} :TmuxNavigateDown<cr>
nnoremap <silent> {Up-Mapping} :TmuxNavigateUp<cr>
nnoremap <silent> {Right-Mapping} :TmuxNavigateRight<cr>
nnoremap <silent> {Previous-Mapping} :TmuxNavigatePrevious<cr>Note Each instance of {Left-Mapping} or {Down-Mapping} must be replaced
in the above code with the desired mapping. Ie, the mapping for <ctrl-h> =>
Left would be created with nnoremap <silent> <c-h> :TmuxNavigateLeft<cr>.
You can configure the plugin to write the current buffer, or all buffers, when
navigating from Vim to tmux. This functionality is exposed via the
g:tmux_navigator_save_on_switch variable, which can have either of the
following values:
| Value | Behavior |
|---|---|
| 1 | :update (write the current buffer, but only if changed) |
| 2 | :wall (write all buffers) |
To enable this, add the following (with the desired value) to your ~/.vimrc:
" Write all buffers before navigating from Vim to tmux pane
let g:tmux_navigator_save_on_switch = 2By default, if you zoom the tmux pane running Vim and then attempt to navigate "past" the edge of the Vim session, tmux will unzoom the pane. This is the default tmux behavior, but may be confusing if you've become accustomed to navigation "wrapping" around the sides due to this plugin.
We provide an option, g:tmux_navigator_disable_when_zoomed, which can be used
to disable this unzooming behavior, keeping all navigation within Vim until the
tmux pane is explicitly unzoomed.
To disable navigation when zoomed, add the following to your ~/.vimrc:
" Disable tmux navigator when zooming the Vim pane
let g:tmux_navigator_disable_when_zoomed = 1Alter each of the five lines of the tmux configuration listed above to use your custom mappings. Note each line contains two references to the desired mapping.
The default key bindings include <Ctrl-l> which is the readline key binding
for clearing the screen. The following binding can be added to your ~/.tmux.conf file to provide an alternate mapping to clear-screen.
bind C-l send-keys 'C-l'With this enabled you can use <prefix> C-l to clear the screen.
Thanks to Brian Hogan for the tip on how to re-map the clear screen binding.
If you like to nest your tmux sessions, this plugin is not going to work properly. It probably never will, as it would require detecting when Tmux would wrap from one outermost pane to another and propagating that to the outer session.
By default this plugin works on the outermost tmux session and the vim sessions it contains, but you can customize the behaviour by adding more commands to the expression used by the grep command.
When nesting tmux sessions via ssh or mosh, you could extend it to look like
'(^|\/)g?(view|vim|ssh|mosh?)(diff)?$', which makes this plugin work within
the innermost tmux session and the vim sessions within that one. This works
better than the default behaviour if you use the outer Tmux sessions as relays
to different hosts and have all instances of vim on remote hosts.
Similarly, if you like to nest tmux locally, add |tmux to the expression.
This behaviour means that you can't leave the innermost session with Ctrl-hjkl
directly. These following fallback mappings can be targeted to the right Tmux
session by escaping the prefix (Tmux' send-prefix command).
bind -r C-h run "tmux select-pane -L"
bind -r C-j run "tmux select-pane -D"
bind -r C-k run "tmux select-pane -U"
bind -r C-l run "tmux select-pane -R"
bind -r C-\ run "tmux select-pane -l"This is likely due to conflicting key mappings in your ~/.vimrc. You can use
the following search pattern to find conflicting mappings
\vn(nore)?map\s+\<c-[hjkl]\>. Any matching lines should be deleted or
altered to avoid conflicting with the mappings from the plugin.
Another option is that the pattern matching included in the .tmux.conf is
not recognizing that Vim is active. To check that tmux is properly recognizing
Vim, use the provided Vim command :TmuxNavigatorProcessList. The output of
that command should be a list like:
Ss -zsh
S+ vim
S+ tmux
If you encounter a different output please open an issue with as much info about your OS, Vim version, and tmux version as possible.
This functionality requires tmux version 1.8 or higher. You can check your version to confirm with this shell command:
tmux -V # should return 'tmux 1.8'If you find that navigation within Vim (from split to split) is fine, but Vim
to a non-Vim tmux pane is delayed, it might be due to a slow shell startup.
Consider moving code from your shell's non-interactive rc file (e.g.,
~/.zshenv) into the interactive startup file (e.g., ~/.zshrc) as Vim only
sources the non-interactive config.
Terminal mode is currently unsupported as adding this plugin's mappings there causes conflict with movement mappings for FZF (it also uses terminal mode). There's a conversation about this in christoomey#172
tmate is a tmux fork that aids in setting up remote pair programming sessions. It is designed to run alongside tmux without issue, but occasionally there are hiccups. Specifically, if the versions of tmux and tmate don't match, you can have issues. See this issue for more detail.
The tmux configuration uses an inlined grep pattern match to help determine if the current pane is running Vim. If you run into any issues with the navigation not happening as expected, you can try using Mislav's original external script which has a more robust check.