# GNU Screen

33 Hacker News commenters recommended GNU Screen and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Long-standing terminal multiplexer for keeping sessions alive across disconnects, with a well-written man page and simple key bindings. Critics call it old, with weak UTF-8 support.

## Why people recommend it

- Resumes sessions after reconnecting (3 comments): "just running screen or tmux on the other end and just resume where you left of after quick reconnect" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46644851)) "Whereas with screen/tmux you can just pop it open again and see the whole session." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49106991)) "open my whole session in a terminal multiplexer (screen, tmux)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48227847))
- Logs and dumps session output (3 comments): "One nicety there now is that you can easily get a dump of what's showing in the pty with screen -S -X hardcopy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47753960)) "starting everything from within GNU screen or tmux with logging turned on" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46233756)) "script (or screen/tmux logging) will capture both though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46235475))
- Small, long-lived and stable (3 comments): "Screen is only 280Kb (armv7), statically compiled with curses." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47763642)) "been using it for 25 years, so far so good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47753421)) "And I've used it ever since." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47756344))
- Detaching and reattaching works well (2 comments): "Detaching is working just fine with `screen` as well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208764)) "I do the dinosaur version of this, with screen and xpra. Works great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585178))

## What people warn about

- Weak or missing UTF-8 support (2 comments): "It was an attempt to bolt on UTF8 support, but it's not great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47757821)) "Screen does not have UTF8 support, tmux does." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47754110))
- Dated emulator lags modern output (2 comments): "that emulator is decades old and lags far behind what modern programs emit" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48497026)) "the venerable but ancient GNU screen" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49929325))
- Bug and codebase concerns (2 comments): "I traced it back to a bug in screen, which I patched in my own screen fork." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928643)) "I switched from screen to tmux due to rumor about the screen code base" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47017432))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [tmux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tmux.md): 411 recommend
- [Herdr](https://hackerapproved.com/p/herdr.md): 232 recommend
- [Zellij](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zellij.md): 93 recommend
- [zmx](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zmx.md): 23 recommend
- [Rex by Superlogical](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rex.md): 21 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "GNU Screen", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gnu-screen/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).