---
title: Seamlessly Navigate Vim and tmux Splits
teaser:
tags: tmux,vim
author: Derek Prior
published_on: 2013-06-15
---

My tmux session for a given project typically has two horizontal tmux panes with
Vim occupying the top 80% of the screen and a shell running below that occupying
the remainder. For the most part I stay in Vim, splitting often, and [moving
amongst those splits with ease][moving].

![tmux and Vim splits](http://media.tumblr.com/1c2e99dfd815537bdbbbe933eca51f99/tumblr_inline_moe8bluR2C1qz4rgp.jpg)

Then I'll decide to pop down to the shell split for a moment and confidently hit
`<C-j>`... nothing. Hmph. Let's try again. `<C-j> `...  nothing. Oh, right,
that's not a Vim split, it's a tmux split.  `<C-a>j`.

I'm constantly stumbling over the disconnect between Vim and tmux splits.
There's a little mental hurdle I have to clear each time and I fail at that more
often than I'd care to admit. It's 2013; Shouldn't the computer be able to
figure out what I *meant* and just do that? As it turns out, yes.

## Vim and tmux, Together in Harmony

[Mislav Marohnić][mislav] devised a [solution][solution] that allows for using
the same key strokes to switch between Vim and tmux splits. With this in place,
I can use `<C-h/j/k/l>` to seamlessly navigate all my splits, be they from tmux
or Vim.

Mislav's post has an installation script, but a few of us at thoughtbot had
trouble getting those exact scripts running successfully. We've been able to
simplify and generalize the solution some.

## Installation

To get the whole thing running, follow these two steps:

1. Install the [vim-tmux-navigator](https://github.com/christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator)
  Vim plugin from [Chris Toomey](http://ctoomey.com).
  With [vundle](https://github.com/gmarik/vundle), that’s as simple as adding
  the following to your ~/.vimrc file: `Bundle 'christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator'`
2. Add the following to your `~/.tmux.conf` configuration file to conditionally
  bind the movement keys depending on the active command:

        # smart pane switching with awareness of vim splits
        bind -n C-h run "(tmux display-message -p '#{pane_current_command}' | grep -iq vim && tmux send-keys C-h) || tmux select-pane -L"
        bind -n C-j run "(tmux display-message -p '#{pane_current_command}' | grep -iq vim && tmux send-keys C-j) || tmux select-pane -D"
        bind -n C-k run "(tmux display-message -p '#{pane_current_command}' | grep -iq vim && tmux send-keys C-k) || tmux select-pane -U"
        bind -n C-l run "(tmux display-message -p '#{pane_current_command}' | grep -iq vim && tmux send-keys C-l) || tmux select-pane -R"
        bind -n C-\ run "(tmux display-message -p '#{pane_current_command}' | grep -iq vim && tmux send-keys 'C-\\') || tmux select-pane -l"

**Note:** An earlier version of this post included more steps and dependencies.
Thanks to readers [Chis Eskow][eskow] and [Christopher Sexton][sexton] for
helping simplify the setup.

## What's next

If you found this useful, you might also enjoy:

* [Navigating Ruby Files in Vim][navigating]
* [Running Specs from Vim Sent to tmux via Tslime][tslime]
* [Use RSpec.vim with tmux and Dispatch][dispatch]

[dispatch]: https://thoughtbot.com/blog/use-rspec-vim-with-tmux-and-dispatch
[eskow]: http://chriseskow.com/
[mislav]:http://mislav.uniqpath.com/
[moving]: https://thoughtbot.com/blog/vim-splits-move-faster-and-more-naturally
[navigating]: https://thoughtbot.com/upcase/navigating-ruby-files-with-vim
[sexton]: http://www.codeography.com/2013/06/19/navigating-vim-and-tmux-splits
[solution]:https://gist.github.com/mislav/5189704
[tslime]: https://thoughtbot.com/blog/running-specs-from-vim-sent-to-tmux-via-tslime