When hitting the window switch key sequence (eg. Starting with window switchingīefore getting into pane switching, handling the window switching component is a bit easier and doesn’t involve integrating with vim. The standard tmux prefix-key-based pane switching should be unaffected by this so it can be used to switch windows/panes other than in the innermost nested session.Īs it turns out, this isn’t too hard to do.Alt + number should switch to the corresponding window and if running a nested tmux session or ssh, should be sent to the inner session. Switching between tmux windows should work similarly (but without delegation to vim).If using ssh within tmux, pane switching keys should be sent over ssh in case there’s a remote vim or nested tmux session running.If using nested tmux sessions, pane switching keys should always be delegated to the inner-most session (typically the most commonly desired behavior).When transitioning between tmux and vim, switching should work “as expected”, navigating to the closest pane in the selected direction. Be able to switch between both tmux panes and vim windows using a consistent mechanism (in my case, using Alt + arrow keys).I wanted to remove some of the friction from pane and window switching in these circumstances, so came up with the following requirements: You need to use different key sequences to switch between tmux panes than you need to switch between vim panes (vim “windows”) and when working with nested sessions, it always takes a moment to stop and think about how many layers deep need to be prefixed. When working with vim inside of tmux, and with nested tmux sessions inside ssh, pane switching can quickly become an annoyance.

Tmux switch panes