Tmux

tmux is a "terminal multiplexer: it enables a number of terminals (or windows), each running a separate program, to be created, accessed, and controlled from a single screen. tmux may be detached from a screen and continue running in the background, then later reattached."

Global configuration

tmux can be configured globally from /etc/nixos/configuration.nix.

As an example:

programs.tmux = {
  enable = true;
  clock24 = true;
  extraConfig = '' # used for less common options, intelligently combines if defined in multiple places.
    ...
  '';
}

Note that extraConfig writes directly to /etc/tmux.conf

Using Plugins

Tmux plugins can be also configured using programs.tmux.plugins. They can be found as NixOS packages: tmuxPlugins.

Each of the tmux plugin is run via run-shell automatically.

Some plugins need to be run after having had some custom configuration done>, but extraConfig gets executed after. For example tmuxPlugins.cpu needs the status line be declared before the plugin is run. For that scenario, run-shell can be added within extraConfig:

programs.tmux = {
  enable = true;
  extraConfig = ''
    ...
    set -g status-right '#[fg=black,bg=color15] #{cpu_percentage}  %H:%M '
    run-shell ${pkgs.tmuxPlugins.cpu}/share/tmux-plugins/cpu/cpu.tmux
  '';
}

Per-user configuration

If you want to configure per user, you could use Home Manager. This also gives you more options available directly through nix, as opposed to through an extra config option. Though it should be noted that a few of the options have different names.

Example configuration

There is a good example of tmux configuration here.

Alternatives

GNU Screen
Zellij

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