Having tmux load by default when a zsh terminal is launched

Question

My current workflow is:

1. CTRL+SHIFT+T to launch a new terminal window. That starts a new zsh terminal.
2. Type tmux to start tmux.

How can I have tmux load by default with a new terminal window?

Answer 1

There are at least two ways:

1. Write something like

   if [ "$TMUX" = "" ]; then tmux; fi
   

   at the beginning of ~/.zshrc. Note the conditional test to a possible loop when tmux spawns its own zsh.

2. Modify terminal launching command to something like

   xterm -e tmux
   

I prefer the second way, because sometimes I need to launch a terminal without tmux (for example when I need to reconnect to an existing session).

Answer 2

Be careful with the echo tmux >> ~/.zshrc solution though, I remember that simply throwing a bash in a .cshrc file caused me trouble over SSH.

IIRC the problem occurred with non-interactive shells, so you'd better test for that.

case $- in *i*)
  if [ -z "$TMUX"]; then exec tmux; fi;;
esac

Answer 3

Add "tmux" to your .zshrc file, which gets executed every time you start zsh. The quick way:

echo tmux >> ~/.zshrc