tmux zoom

Zooming into the current split in tmux is a valuable tool to give yourself some screen real estate. These days I am almost always presenting, streaming, or pairing up with a co-worker over a video call. Since I am always sharing my screen I am generally zoomed in to a level that is just a bit uncomfortable, so anytime I make a split it is really uncomfortable, being able to zoom into the split I am focused on is a big help, and also help anyone watching follow where
I am currently working.

Default key bindings for zooming the current split

bind-key          z resize-pane -Z

I have rebound this to match the default binding with mod+z rather so that I get that single keystroke experience.

bind -n M-z resize-pane -Z

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How I navigate tmux in 2021

Waylon Walker ・ May 12 '21

#bash #linux #productivity

Also check out this long form post for more about how I use tmux.

Comments

[Jonas B. R.]

Waylon, thanks for that! I am considerably improving my tmux workflow with your tips. I was not aware of this zooming capability, is it so useful!

[Ruby Rubenstahl]

Definitely a helpful one to know. I use it a thousand times a day. I like to have a tmux window with a pane each for vim, testing, and a command prompt for running misc commands.

Most of the time I'll keep my code window zoomed and then drop back to tiled mode when I need to have eyes on the logs.

[Jonas B. R.]

Yes! Exactly that...!

Also, after adopting that today I made a small improvement as well, I just added to my status line:
(inside status-left in .tmux.conf)

#P/#{window_panes}

...so it displays in status line:

<active pane number>/<amount of panes>

...like:

2/3

...so when zoomed in you know that the window has more panes.