Vim Tmux Navigator

This plugin is a repackaging of Mislav Marohnić's tmux-navigator configuration described in this gist, and a slight rewrite of christoomey's plugin that this is a fork of and also incorporates the zoom idea from svenfuchs' gist.

When combined with a set of tmux key bindings and the provided ruby script, the plugin will allow you to navigate seamlessly between vim and tmux splits using a consistent set of hotkeys.

NOTE: This requires tmux v1.8 or higher.

Difference from christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator and other influences

This plugin and it's parts are based on the fine work by [mislav], [christoomey], and [svenfuchs]. There were a few things I wanted to change/incorporate. Here's what I changed:

1. This fork adds a zoom feature. When navigating past the last screen in any direction, (whether it be a vim window or tmux split), this plugin with toggle the tmux zoom feature.
2. This fork uses an external script instead of large inlined shell script. This makes setup a little more complicated, but simplifies the tmux config. It also requires ruby.
3. svenfuchs' gist sends :ex commands to vim. Because of this, moving between vim splits doesn't work in insert mode. This fork overrides F1-8 keys, which allows the movements to work in any vim mode. If you use vim mappings for F keys, this plugin probably won't work. However, you should be able to pick your own "secret" mappings in tmux-vim-select-pane.rb.
4. I do not use the toggle between last active pane feature, so I have not tried to get it to work.

Usage

This plugin provides the following mappings which allow you to move between Vim panes and tmux splits seamlessly.

• <ctrl-h> => Left
• <ctrl-j> => Down
• <ctrl-k> => Up
• <ctrl-l> => Right

When using any of these keys when moving would move off the screen will

Note - you don't need to use your tmux prefix key sequence before using the mappings.

Installation

Vim

If you don't have a preferred installation method, I recommend using vim-update-bundles. Assuming you have Vundle installed and configured, the following steps will install the plugin:

Add the following line to your ~/.vimrc file

" Bundle 'amiel/vim-tmux-navigator'

tmux-vim-select-pane.rb

Download tmux-vim-select-pane.rb; make sure it is executable and in your path.

Tmux

Add the following to your tmux.conf file to configure the tmux side of this customization.

# Smart pane switching with awareness of vim splits
bind -n C-k run-shell 'tmux-vim-select-pane.rb -U'
bind -n C-j run-shell 'tmux-vim-select-pane.rb -D'
bind -n C-h run-shell 'tmux-vim-select-pane.rb -L'
bind -n C-l run-shell 'tmux-vim-select-pane.rb -R'

Restoring Clear Screen (C-l)

The default key bindings include <Ctrl-l> which is the readline key binding for clearing the screen. The following binding can be added to your ~/.tmux.conf file to provide an alternate mapping to clear-screen.

bind C-l send-keys 'C-l'

With this enabled you can use <prefix> C-l to clear the screen.

Thanks to Brian Hogan for the tip on how to re-map the clear screen binding.

Troubleshooting

Vim -> Tmux doesn't work!

This is likely due to conflicting key mappings in your ~/.vimrc. You can use the following search pattern to find conflicting mappings \vn(nore)?map\s+\<c-[hjkl]\>. Any matching lines should be deleted or altered to avoid conflicting with the mappings from the plugin.

Tmux Can't Tell if Vim Is Active

This functionality requires tmux version 1.8 or higher. You can check your version to confirm with this shell command:

tmux -V # should return 'tmux 1.8' or higher