Install tmuxp with Homebrew, apt, Nix, pacman

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• tmuxp

Project history

The official docs carry a 2013 copyright line for Tony Narlock, and the changelog records active public releases by the mid-2010s. Early tmuxp grew around loading declarative tmux layouts, then added tmux 2.0 support, environment expansion, multi-session loading, and named config loading. In 2016, the 1.0 release-candidate split core tmux APIs into libtmux and moved the project toward a cleaner library/CLI boundary.

The project kept tracking tmux changes and Python packaging expectations. Later releases added OpenBSD support, XDG Base Directory support, a plugin system, `tmuxp shell`, workspace terminology, completion changes, and ongoing libtmux bumps for modern tmux versions. By 2026, its changelog shows tmux 3.7 support and feature parity flowing through libtmux while preserving YAML workspace compatibility.

Adoption history

tmuxp's README documents installation through pip, uv/uvx, Homebrew, Debian/Ubuntu, and Nix, and links to Repology for distribution versions. The supplied package facts additionally list Arch Linux packaging, so it has the kind of multi-channel packaging footprint that terminal users expect for infrastructure-adjacent CLI tools.

Its adoption niche overlaps with tmuxinator but appeals to Python users and to people who want both declarative tmux workspaces and a Python API. The official docs explicitly compare tmuxp with tmuxinator and teamocil: all load sessions from config files, while tmuxp is Python, uses libtmux's ORM layer, supports JSON and YAML, and can freeze running sessions back to config.

How it is used

The normal workflow is to write a YAML or JSON workspace, run `tmuxp load`, and let tmuxp create sessions, windows, panes, layouts, working directories, and shell commands. It can also load projects by directory when `.tmuxp.yaml` or `.tmuxp.json` is present, load multiple sessions, start detached, and freeze an existing tmux session into a config file.

tmuxp also imports tmuxinator and teamocil style configs, making it useful when migrating between tmux session managers. Its `tmuxp shell` command opens a Python console preloaded with libtmux server/session/window objects, which makes it attractive to users who debug or automate tmux from Python.

Why package nerds care

For package nerds, tmuxp is the Pythonic counterpart to Ruby-based tmuxinator. It matters because it packages tmux layouts as portable config files, exposes the same state through libtmux, and keeps compatibility with package-manager installation paths and shell completion workflows.

The project is also a useful case study in how CLI tools survive changing platform layers: its changelog repeatedly tracks tmux version support, Python version support, Click/completion behavior, XDG paths, and distro packaging needs.

Timeline

• 2013: Official docs copyright begins for Tony Narlock.
• 2015: 0.8.0 added tmux 2.0 support and command API cleanup.
• 2016: 1.0.0-rc1 split core tmux APIs into libtmux and refreshed docs/tests.
• 2016: 1.1.0 rewrote the CLI around Click and added config-name loading.
• 2018: 1.5.0 added XDG Base Directory support.
• 2021: 1.7.0 was the last Python 2.7 release and added stable plugin support.
• 2022: 1.18.0 renamed config concepts toward workspace terminology and reorganized workspace modules.
• 2026: 1.71.0 and 1.72.0 added tmux 3.7 support through newer libtmux releases.

Related projects

• Built on libtmux, the Python API layer for tmux.
• Related to tmuxinator and teamocil as alternate tmux session managers whose config styles tmuxp can import.

Sources

• https://github.com/tmux-python/tmuxp#readme
• https://tmuxp.git-pull.com/
• https://tmuxp.git-pull.com/history/
• https://tmuxp.git-pull.com/quickstart/
• https://tmuxp.git-pull.com/topics/
• input source_facts.package-manager