Tmux session wizard

One prefix key to rule them all (with fzf & zoxide):

Creating a new session from a list of recently accessed directories
Naming a session after a directory/project
Switching sessions
Viewing current or creating new sessions in one popup

Elevator Pitch

Tmux is powerful, yes, but why is creating/switching sessions (arguably its main feature) is so damn hard to do? To create a new session for a project you have to run tmux new-session -s <session-name> -c <project-directory>. What if you're inside tmux? Oh, wait you have to use -d followed by tmux switch-client -t <session-name>. Oh, wait again! What if you're outside tmux and you want to attach to an existing session? now you have to run tmux attach -t <session-name> instead. What if you can't remember whether you have a session for that project or not. Guess what? Now you have to run tmux has-session -t <session-name>. What if your project folder contains characters not accepted by tmux as a session name? What if you want to show a list of existing sessions? You run tmux list-sessions. What if you want to create a session for a project you've recently navigated to? What if, what if, what if.... HOW IS THAT BETTER THAN HAVING 20 TERMINAL WINDOWS OPEN?

What if you could use 1 prefix key to do all of this? Read on!

Features

prefix + T (customisable) - displays a pop-up with fzf which displays the existing sessions followed by recently accessed directories (using zoxide). Choose the session or the directory and voila! You're in that session. If the session doesn't exist, it will be created.

Required

You must have fzf, zoxide installed and available in your path.

Installation with Tmux Plugin Manager (recommended)

Add plugin to the list of TPM plugins in .tmux.conf:

set -g @plugin '27medkamal/tmux-session-wizard'

Hit prefix + I to fetch the plugin and source it. That's it!

Manual Installation

Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/27medkamal/tmux-session-wizard ~/clone/path

Add this line to the bottom of .tmux.conf:

run-shell ~/clone/path/tmux-session-wizard.tmux

Reload TMUX environment with $ tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf, and that's it.

Customisation

You can customise the prefix key by adding this line to your .tmux.conf:

set -g @session-wizard 'T'
set -g @session-wizard 'T K' # for multiple key bindings

You can also customise the height and width of the tmux popup by adding the follwing lines to your .tmux.conf:

set -g @session-wizard-height 40
set -g @session-wizard-width 80

To customise the way session names are created, use @session-wizard-mode option. Allowed values are:

directory (default)
full-path
short-path

set -g @session-wizard-mode "full-path"

By default, tmux-session-wizard gives you a list of open sessions (hence the name). An alternative is that it gives you a list of windows to choose from. This can be turned on using the setting @session-wizard-windows. Add this line to your .tmux.conf to enable this behaviour:

set -g @session-wizard-windows on # default is off

(Optional) Using the script outside of tmux

Note: you'll need to check the path of your tpm plugins. It may be ~/.tmux/plugins or ~/.config/tmux/plugins depending on where your tmux.conf is located.

bash

Add the following line to ~/.bashrc

# ~/.tmux/plugins
export PATH=$HOME/.tmux/plugins/tmux-session-wizard/bin:$PATH
# ~/.config/tmux/plugins
export PATH=$HOME/.config/tmux/plugins/tmux-session-wizard/bin:$PATH

zsh

Add the following line to ~/.zprofile

# ~/.tmux/plugins
export PATH=$HOME/.tmux/plugins/tmux-session-wizard/bin:$PATH
# ~/.config/tmux/plugins
export PATH=$HOME/.config/tmux/plugins/tmux-session-wizard/bin:$PATH

fish

Add the following line to ~/.config/fish/config.fish

# ~/.tmux/plugins
fish_add_path $HOME/.tmux/plugins/tmux-session-wizard/bin
# ~/.config/tmux/plugins
fish_add_path $HOME/.config/tmux/plugins/tmux-session-wizard/bin

You can then run t from anywhere to use the script.

You can also run t with a relative or absolute path to a directory (similar to zoxide) to create a session for that directory. For example, t ~/projects/my-project will create a session named my-project and cd into that directory.

Also, depending on the terminal emulator you use, you can make it always start what that script.

Development

The development environment is built with Nix and Nix's Flakes, if you have it on your system then just run nix develop and you are ready to go. Other method is to build the Docker image based on provided Dockerfile:

docker build --tag tmux-session-wizard:dev --file ./Dockerfile .

To run the tests, just run bats ./tests for local development environment or docker run --rm -it -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v $PWD:$PWD -w $PWD tmux-session-wizard:dev bats ./tests if you are using Docker.

There is also the helper script for it ./scripts/run-tests.sh, run ./scripts/run-tests.sh -h to get more information about usage.

Inspiration

ThePrimeagen's tmux-sessionizer
Josh Medeski's t-smart-tmux-session-manager

License

MIT