Boost Productivity with tmux & tmuxinator: Seamless Multi-Terminal Workflows

tmux allows you to run multiple terminal sessions within a single window, and tmuxinator lets you save and launch predefined tmux configurations.

For example, a Rails developer can open separate panes for the server, console, and log tailing; a Clojure‑based project can run a shell, a Grunt front‑end build, a Datomic database, and deployment tasks simultaneously.

Running a single command such as mux ath can start all these sessions, avoiding the need to remember and start each service manually.

Getting Started with tmux and tmuxinator

Install tmux (see the referenced gist).

Install tmuxinator via gem install tmuxinator.

Create your first tmuxinator configuration file at ~/.tmuxinator/sample.yml, e.g.:

name: sample
root: ~/path/to/your/project
pre: git pull
windows:
  - shell:
  - server: bundle exec rails s

Before opening windows, the pre command runs in the project root. Switch windows with C-b n (next) and C-b p (previous). Detach a session with C-b d; the session continues running in the background.

To terminate a session completely, use tmux kill-session -t sample (or create an alias like alias tmk="tmux kill-session -t" and run tmk sample).

For more details, refer to the tmuxinator GitHub repository and the tmux cheatsheet.