# tmux 411 Hacker News commenters recommended tmux and 111 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (14 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A long-proven terminal multiplexer for persistent remote sessions, panes and scripting, now popular for running AI agents, though copying text and scrollback can be awkward. ## Why people recommend it - Detach and reattach sessions anywhere (8 comments): "With tmux, you can attach to it at any time, send keys at any time, and capture pane without bothering any running process inside." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635057)) "running multiple simultaneous sessions on a remote server using Tmux to have them preconfigured when you reconnect is nice." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47929776)) "My main use case for tmux is detaching and re-attaching to a session on a remote server, for which it's extremely useful." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47753061)) - Works well with AI agents (7 comments): "With so much of my work being done with Claude Code via terminal, I’ve used vim and tmux more than I have in the 20 years since I was first introduced." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47016812)) "The unlock here is tmux-based session management for the teammates, with two-way communication using agent inbox. It works very well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748872)) "Some of the top performing agent harnesses on Terminal Bench provide literally one tool: tmux, which outperforms Claude Code et al." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47828670)) - Great over SSH and phones (5 comments): "I tried Mosh+Tmux with 2.7 KBPS (and less) when I was using a data plan. It worked perfectly fine, no delay or barely noticeable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47876251)) "If you're doing web dev work in this day an age SSH with tmux or some editor with SSH server support should be your dev setup." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48474356)) "Really just worth learning SSH and Tmux instead of building your workflow against something that's trying to replace them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985577)) - Stable, battle-tested and lightweight (5 comments): "tmux handles them perfectly. Exactly the claim that OP is making with their software - is served by robust 18 year old software." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47693894)) "does exactly what I need it to do and doesn't try too hard to make the terminal a place with unicorns and fancy GUI magic" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762400)) "The biggest benefit for me which I haven't realized how good it is with tmux and the low low memory usage" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47569151)) ## What people warn about - Awkward copying and scrollback (3 comments): "The one thing I still struggle with - because it happens rarely - is easily copying the contents" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47753995)) "in mouse mode it seems to copy more characters than I want, copy newlines when I don't want them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47755970)) "tmux's scrollback seems to clash with CC's, and makes copying between windows etc challenging." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46496810)) - Clunky for agent-heavy workflows (4 comments): "it's very good at sending the initial text to the tmux sessions, but I've not been able to get an agent to have a proper back and forth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47429556)) "Running the agent as an interactive CLI process which you need to stuff into something like tmux is just the wrong approach" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50150553)) "it's not the greatest. And when I have a bunch of opencode sessions rolling along often my tmux could usage is smoking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50299375)) - Bad defaults, separate keybindings (2 comments): "I actually migrated away from tmux because I became tired of using one set of keybindings to manage my terminal windows" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50156930)) "the only software I've seen people excuse for having 'bad defaults' have been things like vim, emacs, tmux." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47760228)) - Security risk with agent harnesses (2 comments): "despite them having strong security posture its just a threat that was previously a bit outlandish and not accounted for" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49472344)) "it still has quirks and combined with agent harnesses not understanding them its a large attack surface" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49651825)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Herdr](https://hackerapproved.com/p/herdr.md): 232 recommend - [Zellij](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zellij.md): 93 recommend - [GNU Screen](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gnu-screen.md): 33 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, "tmux", https://hackerapproved.com/p/tmux/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).