Friday Night, One Coffee Too Many
I was two reverts deep into a Kubernetes mess. My laptop fan sounded like a jet engine. And there it was—my aging tmux config staring me down like a dare.
Three panes, two seconds apart because I hit the wrong prefix combo again. I could feel the hum coming: the code review would ask why my terminal looked like a disco. Something had to give.
Sound familiar? If you’ve ever lost half an afternoon line-editing a tmux.conf that looks like hieroglyphics, keep reading.
What tmux Still Does Right
Look: tmux saved us all for years. It’s the Swiss-army knife that:
- keeps builds alive when your Wi-Fi drops
- lets your senior dev ssh in to debug
- runs on machines older than your cousin
But the learning curve? Rough. A basic split needs Ctrl-b %—I call it the sideways crab. And good luck if you actually want to save that layout for tomorrow.
The Night I Flipped the Switch
January 2024, 3:14 a.m. I finally hit the install. One line:
cargo install zellij
My plan: “I’ll just open it while the coffee brews. If I hate it, I’ll close the tab.”
The first thing I noticed? The cheat sheet was already inside it. Press Ctrl-g and boom—colors, hotkeys, examples. No opening Stack Overflow at midnight.
Five Minutes Later, Real Talk
I recreated my three-pane dev server layout with my mouse. Drag, drop, lock. Then I saved it as a file called dev.yml. Here’s the whole thing:
layout:
template: "strider"
parts:
- direction: "Vertical"
split_size:
percent: 60
- direction: "Vertical"
split_size:
percent: 40
That’s it. Readable, Git-trackable, sharable. Copy it to a teammate and it opens exact—no “works on my machine” shrug emoji.
Zellij’s Secret Weapons
1. WebAssembly Plugins
I needed a litte database browser widget. Plugged in WezQL via the plugin menu. Ran in its own pane. When I closed my laptop and reopened at Starbucks, the plugin—and my data—were still there.
2. Crash-Proof Sessions
Two weeks ago my battery fell to zero mid-build. I plugged back in, typed zellij attach, and everything popped exactly where I left off. With tmux I’d habitually open a second terminal just to tail the log. Not anymore.
3. Team Pairing That Doesn’t Suck
Shared the session link on Slack. My frontend teammate clicked, got a browser tab with my real terminal. No VPN dance, no tmate setup. One minuscule url did the trick. We shipped the fix by noon.
Migrating Without a Hitch
| Week | Task | Hook to Keep You Motivated |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Install side-by-side | Use it only for side projects. Zero risk, maximum curiosity. |
| 2 | Port your muscle memory | Open zellij setup, map Ctrl-b to Ctrl-p in thirty seconds. Feel your hands relax. |
| 3 | Make it default | Small dopamine every time it boots without that single red error line. |
Pro move: Keep tmux running in a Ctrl-b p binding so you can flip back if Armageddon happens. It never did for me.
When You Might Stay on tmux
I promised honesty, so here’s the short list:
- You’re scripting across 200-edge-device routers that still ship BusyBox from 2012.
- You’ve glued together an intricate gallery of home-made shell scripts that literally control the HVAC (yes, real NASA engineer I met).
For the other 95 % of us? Zellij wins.
The One-Line Verdict
Switching cut my nightly yak-shaving from 30 min average to 30 sec maximum. That’s 876 hours gifted back over a decade.
Try it once. Worst case you hit exit. Best case you reclaim evenings for actual hobbies. Or, you know, sleep.
Install:
cargo install zellij
Run:
zellij
Press Ctrl-g to say hello to 2025.
