94

GNU Screen has Ctrl-a,Ctrl-a to switch between the two latest windows.

How to do it in tmux?

Mehrshad Khansarian
  • 9
kev
  • 13,200

5 Answers5

142

To do this in tmux, you do

Ctrl-Bl

(that is a lowercase 'L'). This assumes you have left Ctrl-B as your activation key.

If you want to use the same keypresses as screen, then add the following to your ~/.tmux.conf:

set-option -g prefix C-a
bind-key C-a last-window

The first sets Ctrl-A as your activation key, the second says Ctrl-A after activation should go to the last window.

Ernest
  • 103
Paul
  • 61,193
8

To follow on to fbicknel and Paul:

you can

bind-key C-a last-window
bind-key a send-prefix

which will let you use a screen-like "ctrl-a a" to insert a 'ctrl a'

CyberPathogen
  • 81
5

Paul's answer is correct, but it seems to leave you without a way to type ^A.

See this thread for details, but essentially you can do this to get a C-a (^A) if you need one:

bind-key v send-prefix

Now if you type C-a v you'll get a ^A.

fbicknel
  • 211
4

I added:
bind-key l last-window
Into my tmux config file which by default is at ~/.tmux.conf.
Reload tmux, switch windows at least once and press:
ctrl+B (default prefix) + l (lower-case L) works like a charm!

Ariel Frischer
  • 141
1

I wanted one that didn't care whether my most previous active thing was a "window" or a "pane". After a bit of work I got it.

add this to your .tmux.conf

set -g focus-events on
bind-key l run-shell "$HOME/bin/tmux-last switch"
set-hook -g pane-focus-out "run-shell 'tmux set-option @last #{pane_id}"
set-hook -g pane-focus-in "run-shell '$HOME/bin/tmux-last in #{@last} #{pane_id}"

And then make this, in our case $HOME/bin/tmux-last:

#!/bin/bash

last="/tmp/tmux-focus-last"
which=$1


if [[ $which == "in" ]]; then
  out=$2
  in=$3
  [[ "$out" == "$in" ]] || echo "$out" > "$last"
elif [[ $which == "switch" ]]; then
  to=$(cat "$last")
  tmux select-window -t $to
  tmux select-pane -t $to
fi

then do

tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

Cycle around a few times and then your <tmux-key> + l, should be similar to an "alt-tab" without erroring at you about the fact that you are in a window or pane mode.

user535759
  • 175