The 15 tmux shortcuts that handle 95% of your day
Every tmux cheatsheet lists all 200+ key bindings. You read the whole thing, retain nothing, and go back to opening twelve terminal tabs. Here's the thing — you need about 15 shortcuts. Those handle 95% of what you'll do on any given day.
The prefix key
Almost every tmux command starts with Ctrl-b. Press it, release, then press the next key. It feels unnatural for about three days, then becomes invisible.
set -g mouse on to your ~/.tmux.conf for mouse support while you learn the keyboard shortcuts. No shame in training wheels.Sessions
Sessions are your top-level containers — one per project. Always name them.
The detach/reattach cycle is tmux's killer feature. Start a process, detach, close your laptop, reattach later — everything's still there.
Panes and windows
That's it. Fifteen shortcuts. Everything else — copy mode, layouts, scripting — you can learn when you actually need it.
For the full reference, see our tmux cheatsheet. Want to customize your config? Try the interactive tmux config editor.