dotfiles / terminal workflow
A portable tmux setup: sensible defaults, directional pane splitting driven by arrow keys, a cheat sheet that greets first-time sessions, and Dracula theming with a curated status bar.
Action Keys What it does
Split ctrl+a + arrow Use arrow keys for desired pane location
Move focus between panes alt+arrow No prefix needed
New window (tab) ctrl+a then c Default tmux binding
easy-tmux is a single-repo tmux configuration meant to be cloned onto a
new machine and made to feel like home in one command. It remaps the
prefix to ctrl+a, numbers windows and panes from
1, keeps a 10,000-line scrollback, and turns on mouse
support — the handful of defaults every tmux setup ends up needing.
Its one real opinion is how panes get split: instead of memorizing
% and ", the arrow key you press is the
direction the new pane opens in. Moving between panes afterward needs no
prefix at all — just alt and an arrow.
| Action | Keys | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Split | ctrl+a+→ | Arrow direction is where the new pane opens |
| Move focus | alt+→ | Switches panes — no prefix needed |
| New window | ctrl+ac | tmux's default binding |
| Reload config | ctrl+ar | Re-sources ~/.tmux.conf |
The split/move/new-window rows print
automatically the first time a fresh terminal opens tmux, via a
session-created hook — not on tmux attach to a
session that already exists.
Dracula, with the status bar widgets pared down to what's actually worth glancing at:
Primarily tested on macOS with zsh. install.sh also wires
into bash on Linux and macOS, and zsh on Linux — those paths are less
exercised. The Dracula battery widget may need extra
tooling (e.g. acpi) to work on Linux.
Clone the repo into ~/repos.
git clone <this-repo-url> ~/repos/easy-tmux
Run the installer. It's idempotent — safe to re-run any time. Existing configs get timestamped and backed up, not overwritten.
~/repos/easy-tmux/install.sh
Open a fresh terminal so your shell's startup file reloads, then start a session.
tmux