In tmux, is it possible to list all panes in all windows?

Question

Say, I got two windows, Window 1 contains 2 pane (1, 2), Window 2 contains 3 panes(1,2,3), and I'm in pane 1 in Window 1, and I want to jump directly into the pane 2 in Window 2, PREFIX w which is choose-window will list all the windows in the session so I can jump into the right window, but it will not list the panes, PREFIX q which is display-panes will let me choose the right pane only in the current window, but not across windows.

So I wonder if there is any command that let me choose panes across windows. The best solution is choose-window or a new command will not only list all the windows but also list all the panes inside each window like tree in a directory.

Answer 1

This problems is solved by commit aad4e4d on github page several months ago, use choose-tree (just bind it to a key) to show all panes in all sessions/widows/tabs, it even shows a preview box when you scroll line into one pane from the list, very nice.

Just compile and install tmux from github source code and you can use this feature.

Answer 2

The command is

tmux list-panes [-a|--all]

You can access this from within a tmux session with

<prefix>: list-panes -a

---

For example, if you need to pass a command to all panes that have vim running, you can do something like:

    tmux list-panes -aF "#{pane_id} #{pane_current_command}" |
    awk '/vim|nvim/ {print $1}' |
    xargs -I {} tmux send-keys -t {} "C-[" ":so ~/.vimrc" "C-m"

This command does the following:

• tmux list-panes -aF "#{pane_id} #{pane_current_command}" lists all panes across all sessions and windows, and for each pane, it prints the pane ID and the current command running in the pane.
• awk '/vim|nvim/ {print $1}' filters the output to only include lines where the current command is either vim or nvim, and then it prints the pane ID of those panes.
• xargs -I {} tmux send-keys -t {} C-[ ":so ~/.vimrc" C-m takes the pane IDs output by awk and for each pane ID, it sends the keys <Esc> (to ensure we're in normal mode), :so ~/.vimrc (the command to reload the vimrc file), and <Enter> (to execute the command) to that pane.

Answer 3

Any item in this list, that return the format <Session.pane_id>:

tmux list-panes -aF "#S.#D"

can be used for send-keys:

tmux send -t '<Session.pane_id>' ls Enter