tmux 3: Productive Mouse-Free Development

Copying and Pasting Text

Moving around and looking for things in the output buffer is usually only half the equation. You often need to copy some text so you can do something useful with it. tmux’s Copy mode gives us the opportunity to select and copy text to a paste buffer so you can dump that text elsewhere.

To copy text, enter Copy mode and move the cursor to where you want to start selecting text. Then press Space and move the cursor to the end of the text. When you press Enter, the selected text gets copied into a paste buffer.

To paste the contents you just captured, press Prefix ].

Let’s look at a few ways to copy and paste text from the main output buffer.

Capturing a Pane

tmux has a handy shortcut that copies the entire visible ...