Tmux plugin manager primary purpose is to install and loads plugins in a controlled and manageable way, and after I installed it, my life became astonishing simpler. Using the tmux manager enables a user to transport and extend the tmux terminal multiplexer. To install the plugin systems, you will need tmux installed firstly, and as the installation pages states, most operating systems has a version to install :
Many platforms provide prebuilt packages of tmux, although these are often out of date. Details of the commands to discover and install these can be found in the documentation for the platform package management tools....
Once you have Tmux installed, navigate to your home directory and open or create a .tmux.conf file and follow the installation information discussed by the tmux plugin manger team. Two problems I noticed when installing the plugin make sure you have git installed, and when you run the following command:
# type this in terminal if tmux is already running $ tmux source ~/.tmux.conf
It doesn't seem to do anything. However, once you start installing the tmux plugins, you see it's power. The manager does exactly what it says; the manager quietly in the background combines the new functionality you need for the tmux multiplexer environment.
For example if you wanted to install the Nord Tmux Teams plugin you would do the following from the terminal prompt,
- add set -g @plugin "arcticicestudio/nord-tmux" to your tmux.conf, by default .tmux.conf located in your home directory
- press the default key binding prefix + I to fetch- and install the plugin
This means to edit the .tmux.conf and add the following line in the plugin section at the bottom of the file, as seen by my illustration below.
#-------------------------------------------------------# # Install plugin manager #-------------------------------------------------------# # List of plugins set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tpm' set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-cpu' set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible' set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-prefix-highlight' set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-urlview' set -g @plugin "arcticicestudio/nord-tmux" set -g @plugin "arcticicestudio/nord-tmux"
Once you have saved the file then do the following to install the plugins press prefix + I (press Caps lock, Ctrl b and then press I)
tmux tmux source ~/.tmux.conf
After a while your terminal will produce a message similar to what you can see below, which means your plugins are installed
[0/0] TMUX environment reloaded. Done, press ESCAPE to continue.
To find the plugins on your system, navigate to the plugin directory on your system, '~/.tmux/plugins' by default.The tmux team have a plugin homepage here. Tmux plugin manager and the .tmux.conf does have a small learning curve that can take several hours to learn, but this system removes clutter from your daily workflow and increases your terminal use in so many ways is worth the effort.