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Configuration

This page walks through first-time setup: declaring plugins and loading tpack.

1. Open your tmux config

Your tmux configuration file is typically at one of these paths:

  • ~/.tmux.conf
  • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tmux/tmux.conf

2. Declare plugins and initialize tpack

The configuration depends on how you installed tpack.

If you installed tpack via Homebrew, AUR, DEB/RPM, or built from source (i.e. the tpack binary is on your $PATH):

# List of plugins
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible'

# Initialize tpack (keep this line at the very bottom of tmux.conf)
run 'tpack init'

If you cloned tpack into ~/.tmux/plugins/tpm:

# List of plugins
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible'

# Initialize tpack (keep this line at the very bottom of tmux.conf)
run '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm'

tpack automatically updates itself when using the auto-downloaded binary (the default for git clone installs) — no self-referencing plugin line is needed. If you built from source with make build, use tpack self-update or rebuild manually.

3. Reload tmux

tmux source ~/.tmux.conf

4. Install plugins

Press ++prefix+shift+i++ to fetch and install all declared plugins.

Tip

After installation, tpack will display a message listing the plugins it installed.

Plugin declaration syntax

Format Example Description
user/repo tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible GitHub shorthand
user/repo#branch tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible#main Specific branch or tag
https://github.com/user/repo.git https://github.com/user/tmux-sensible.git Full HTTPS URL
git@github.com:user/plugin git@github.com:tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible Full git SSH URL (GitHub)
git@bitbucket.com:user/plugin git@bitbucket.com:user/tmux-plugin Non-GitHub git hosts
user/plugin alias=name tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible alias=sensible Custom directory name

For a list of compatible plugins, see the tmux-plugins list.

Next step

Already a TPM user? See Migrating from TPM. Otherwise, head to Usage to learn about key bindings, the TUI, and the CLI.