Tmux - move window to pane

Question

How do I move an existing window into a pane in another window in tmux when I have multiple windows? And vise versa?

I'm coming from screen, where I can switch to the pane and then switch windows until I get to the one I want. Tmux does not seem to allow this.

Answer 1

The command to do this is join-pane in tmux 1.4.

join-pane [-dhv] [-l size | -p percentage] [-s src-pane] [-t dst-pane] (alias: joinp) Like split-window, but instead of splitting dst-pane and creating a new pane, split it and move src-pane into the space. This can be used to reverse break-pane. [1]

To simplify this, I have these binds in my .tmux.conf for that:

# pane movement
bind-key j command-prompt -p "join pane from:"  "join-pane -s '%%'"
bind-key s command-prompt -p "send pane to:"  "join-pane -t '%%'"

The first grabs the pane from the target window and joins it to the current, the second does the reverse.

You can then reload your tmux session by running: $ tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf from within the session.

[1] http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=tmux&sektion=1

Answer 2

join-pane is the answer. I too was having problems with my attempts to use it based on the tmux documentation. I discovered that the -t and -s switches seem to accept [session]:window and not [session:]window. That is to say that specifying the session is optional, but including the : is mandatory. (I am using tmux 1.5)

Therefore, in order to add a pane to the current window and place window 1 into the pane, the command would be (Ctrl-B or whatever your bind key is, followed by)...

:join-pane -s :1

You can then break them appart with break-pane which by default is: Ctrl-B ! If you want to bind it to a shortcut, I suggest NOT overriding a default binding like s, because down the road you will look on the internet for an answer that involves choose-session and it will not work on your system. Notice that break-pane is bound to ! and @ is right next to it and not bound to anything by default. For that reason I suggest this binding...

bind-key @ command-prompt -p "create pane from:"  "join-pane -s ':%%'"

The most important thing is that your LEARN "join-pane -s :" because if you just set it and forget it, you will be gimped when you find yourself on a foreign server. And let's face it, the most important thing a terminal multiplexer gives you is reliable sessions on remote servers.

This completes my conversion from GNU Screen to Tmux. I'll never look back.

Enjoy!

Answer 3

I think I like what I've been using for moving panes to their own window better. I use

break-pane -t :

I figured it out through experimentation, but it seems to work very well. You can keybind or alias it easily, no scripting required.

Answer 4

If you don't want to type the pane identifier into a prompt, you can also use

bind-key j "join-pane -s !"

which will join the last active pane/window to the current window.