What the hell is Zellij?

Zellij is another tool we've had our eye on. We've spent a few weeks on it as our daily terminal workspace. In this video, we find out whether or not it's up to the task of replacement Tmux...

Grab a seat — let's get after it.
00:00 What is Zellij?
00:50 What is a terminal multiplexer?
02:25 Installation
02:46 Keybindings
03:22 Tmux keybindings
03:57 Configuration
04:28 Layouts!
05:26 Session Management
06:27 Will I switch from Tmux?

[mouab]

The design is very human. Very easy to use

[markcoren]

The great news is that the key binding situation you described is being resolved with the next release. In the meantime, you can use ctrl-g to lock the zellij key bindings. That allows us to use our app (vim, etc) bindings unimpeded. Thanks for another great video!

[paechan]

I use Zellij for my little home server. I started with tmux, but since I only log in once a week or so I kinda forgot how to use it. Now I just ssh in and zellij a. All the keybinds are right there, it's great. All defaults.

[kaldyran]

To make neovim and zellij play nice together I completely redid the keybinds for Zellij.
In the keybinds section of config:
unbind "Ctrl b" "Ctrl c" "Ctrl f" "Ctrl g" "Ctrl h" "Ctrl n" "Ctrl o" "Ctrl p" "Ctrl q" "Ctrl s" "Ctrl t"

Then I bound everything to alt. My window manager has everything bound to the super/meta/win key. Zellij has everything bound to Alt. Applications (including neovim) key off of ctrl. No collisions, easy to remember, vim style bindings for everything.

[youngsinatra]

Zellij is great. I unlocked its true power when I realized the only modes you really need are “locked” and “normal”. From there, it’s essentially tmux but better.

[adamevil]

Zellij is pronounced as it's written with a small high note on the double l.
It literally means mosaic in moroccan arabic. I guess it's a great name for a multiplexer. As many panes look like mosaic.

[rachitverma]

You have the coolest intro on the whole of Linux users youtubers set.

[nkodoko]

There is a shortcut Alt + Enter to get a new pane, instead of going into pane mode. That alone led me deeper down the zellij rabbit hole. I'll have to do some digging to report back, but I typically will either used neovim's built-in terminal, or a pane pop-up, that you can pop to the foreground or background. It's pretty convenient. Thanks fo the tmux info as well, nerd!

[NuclearFury]

My first instinct is zellij seems to take over too many keybindings at its base. ctrl-b of tmux only kinda breaks emacs (or moving your shell cursor without the arrow keys I guess), but here ctrl-n and ctrl-p break vim's next/previous completion, ctrl-o for previous location etc. It also lowers the space of such bindings you can use in your shell itself. It's a general problem when you layer programs, and also something I struggle a bit with neovim's terminal mode for that reason.

[andrewiglinski]

I just tried out zellij like 45 minutes ago. I'm 100% on board with the tmux -> zellij workflow. What's really needed, is a lower level vim that acts as a terminal multiplexer *first*, and then can open the traditional vim inside of individual panes.

[michaelhume]

Same reservations that keep me from switching from Tmux. Hopefully your vid brings some light to this missing crucial feature.

[jimcarroll]

To easily switch between panes in zellij: it tells you how right on the bottom line 🙂 So, Alt-HJKL or Alt-<arrow>.
Also, something I can do out of the box with zellij that I can't seem to do with tmux: when you zoom a pane (Ctrl-B Z), you can still navigate between the panes using the Alt-HJKL (Alt-<arrow>). Handy if you like to run nvim full screen and also other command pane(s) full screen.

[zRides]

I was so with you when you came to the conclusion. That is a deal breaker for as well.

[CrashOverride]

Using it since quite a while, it’s awesome ❤

[drewfowler]

Would love to see a dev workflow video from you! Love your stuff

[jjpp]

for new comers it is the option. Though I like the modal aspect of tmux. Even though zellij has a tmux mode, some keybindings still interfere… ended up turning everything but tmux so rolled back to tmux. Probably will test it again soon

[flamendless]

I really love terminal multiplexer. It allowed me to feel and have the fast i3wm dev workflow i miss with arch linux on windows (company env)

[scottfwalter]

Thanks for the video. Like you I'm Team TMUX for now. At least I have a good understanding of Zellij now.

[TheOnlyJura]

do you switch between linux and mac os?

[oleksrow]

Neat of you to cover zellij!

I recently tried setting up nvim rust debugger, but found out that rust-tools were deprecated in favor of rustaceanvim.
Do you plan on doing video while setting up nvim with lldb with it?