Every tutorial / setup ive come across for TMUX uses a prefix when binding keys to actions.
The idea is that you hit your prefix combination, followed by another
separate key, to perform an action. The default prefix is
Ctrl + b, but you are free to remap it to whatever you
want. I initially opted for Ctrl + space.
However, recently I’ve been looking for ways of improving and
streamlining my workflow. To this end I’m trying to move away from using
a prefix at all, and just binding actions to
alt+<key>
So instead of creating a new window with
<prefix> c, which would mean hitting “Control” and
“space” for me, followed by “c”, I have remapped this to just
alt+c - No more prefix.
I know that the ALT key is used by other programs: for
example in firefox ALT+<number> will switch tabs. But
when I am in my TMUX session in the terminal, I don’t care about firefox
bindings, or any other program.
The code example below shows how my “new-window” binding would work, both with a prefix and without a prefix.
Note that the top example is already set in TMUX by default. This is for demonstration purposes only. :)
# Here the <prefix> is assumed by TMUX
# This is a TMUX default binding.
bind c new-window
# passing the "-n" flag to the bind command tells TMUX to not expect the <prefix> before.
# "M" here means "Meta" key, which in my case is the ALT key.
bind -n M-c new-windowFor all the default bindings that I use, I have just created an
“ALT” mapping for them.