Vim Tmux Resizer

This plugin is a re-fork-magining of Chris Toomey's vim-tmux-navigator. When combined with a set of tmux key bindings, the plugin will allow you to resize seamlessly between vim and tmux splits using a consistent set of hotkeys.

NOTE: This requires tmux v1.8 or higher and vim 8.1.1104 or higher.

Usage

This plugin provides the following mappings which allow you to resize between Vim panes and tmux splits seamlessly.

• <ctrl-left> => Resize right-most pane border left
• <ctrl-down> => Resize lowest pane border down
• <ctrl-up> => Resize lowest pane border up
• <ctrl-right> => Resize right-most border right

Note - you don't need to use your tmux prefix key sequence before using the mappings.

If you want to use alternate key mappings, see the configuration section below.

Installation

Vim

If you don't have a preferred installation method, I recommend using Vundle. Assuming you have Vundle installed and configured, the following steps will install the plugin:

Add the following line to your ~/.vimrc file

Plugin 'evs-chris/vim-tmux-resizer'

Then run

:PluginInstall

If you are using Vim 8+, you don't need any plugin manager. Simply clone this repository inside ~/.vim/pack/plugin/start/ directory and restart Vim.

git clone git@github.com:evs-chris/vim-tmux-resizer.git ~/.vim/pack/plugins/start/vim-tmux-resizer

tmux

To configure the tmux side of this customization there are two options:

Add a snippet

Add the following to your ~/.tmux.conf file:

# Smart pane switching with awareness of Vim splits.
# See: https://github.com/evs-chris/vim-tmux-resizer
is_vim="ps -o state= -o comm= -t '#{pane_tty}' \
    | grep -iqE '^[^TXZ ]+ +(\\S+\\/)?g?(view|n?vim?x?)(diff)?$'"
bind-key -n 'C-Left' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-Left'  'resize-pane -L 5'
bind-key -n 'C-Down' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-Down'  'resize-pane -D 5'
bind-key -n 'C-Up' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-Up'  'resize-pane -U 5'
bind-key -n 'C-Right' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-Right'  'resize-pane -R 5'

bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'C-Left' resize-pane -L 5
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'C-Down' resize-pane -D 5
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'C-Up' resize-pane -U 5
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'C-Right' resize-pane -R 5

Configuration

Custom Key Bindings

If you don't want the plugin to create any mappings, you can use the four provided functions to define your own custom maps. You will need to define custom mappings in your ~/.vimrc as well as update the bindings in tmux to match.

Vim

Add the following to your ~/.vimrc to define your custom maps:

let g:tmux_resizer_no_mappings = 1

nnoremap <silent> {Left-Mapping} :TmuxResizeLeft<cr>
nnoremap <silent> {Down-Mapping} :TmuxResizeDown<cr>
nnoremap <silent> {Up-Mapping} :TmuxResizeUp<cr>
nnoremap <silent> {Right-Mapping} :TmuxResizeRight<cr>

Note Each instance of {Left-Mapping} or {Down-Mapping} must be replaced in the above code with the desired mapping. Ie, the mapping for <ctrl-Left> => Left would be created with nnoremap <silent> <c-Left> :TmuxResizeLeft<cr>.

Tmux

Alter each of the lines of the tmux configuration listed above to use your custom mappings. Note each line contains two references to the desired mapping.

Additional Customization

Nesting

I dunno, maybe don't? It might work or might not. I personally try to avoid nested sessions, so it's untested. I'm happy to accept PRs that fix jank, though.

Troubleshooting

Vim doesn't do C-Left and friends

You'll likely need to tell it how for your terminal emulator. Thanks to this handy StackExchange, the way forward is to get in insert mode and press ctrl-v ctrl- once for each of up, down, left, and right and create a vim mapping for each output. Make sure you're holding ctrl for the arrows too.

If you get ^[1;5A for up, like I did, you can map it with map <ESC>[1;5A <C-Up> in your vimrc. The important note here is that ^ is <ESC> and everyting else is usually literal. For reference in Konsole, my mappings are:

map <ESC>[1;5A <C-Up>
map <ESC>[1;5B <C-Down>
map <ESC>[1;5D <C-Left>
map <ESC>[1;5C <C-Right>

Vim -> Tmux doesn't work!

This is likely due to conflicting key mappings in your ~/.vimrc. You can use the following search pattern to find conflicting mappings \vn(nore)?map\s+\<c-(Left|Down|Up|Right)\>. Any matching lines should be deleted or altered to avoid conflicting with the mappings from the plugin.

Another option is that the pattern matching included in the .tmux.conf is not recognizing that Vim is active. To check that tmux is properly recognizing Vim, use the provided Vim command :TmuxResizerProcessList. The output of that command should be a list like:

Ss   -zsh
S+   vim
S+   tmux

If you encounter a different output please open an issue with as much info about your OS, Vim version, and tmux version as possible.

Tmux Can't Tell if Vim Is Active

This functionality requires tmux version 1.8 or higher. You can check your version to confirm with this shell command:

tmux -V # should return 'tmux 1.8'

It Still Doesn't Work!!!

The tmux configuration uses an inlined grep pattern match to help determine if the current pane is running Vim. If you run into any issues with the resizing not happening as expected, you can try using [Mislav's original external script][] which has a more robust check.