How to discover and search tmux key bindings?

•By Romain Dorgueil
tipstmuxterminalshellproductivity

Short answer

Press prefix ? to browse every key binding, with a one-line note each, right inside tmux. From the shell:

tmux list-keys                    # every binding
tmux list-keys -N                 # only the ones with a readable note
tmux list-keys -T copy-mode-vi    # one specific key table
tmux list-commands                # syntax and flags of every command

Details

prefix ? runs list-keys -N: a scrollable list of every binding with a short note. It answers “what does this key do?” without leaving your session, and it is the first place to look before searching the man page.

list-keys prints the same table from the shell. Bindings live in named tables, and -T <table> limits the output to one of them. The ones you touch most are prefix (keys after your prefix), root (keys with no prefix), and copy-mode-vi / copy-mode (keys active while selecting text). So tmux list-keys -T copy-mode-vi is how you find out which key yanks or starts a selection.

list-commands is the other half. It prints the full syntax and flags of every tmux command, so it is the reference when you forget whether resizing a pane is -L or -x:

tmux list-commands | grep resize-pane
# resize-pane (resizep) [-DLMRTUZ] [-x width] [-y height] [-t target-pane] [adjustment]

Between list-keys for the keyboard and list-commands for the CLI, you rarely need to guess. These two are how every snippet on the tmux wiki page was checked.

Verified on tmux 3.2a.

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