How can you tell which pane in Tmux is focused?

Question

I'm starting to use tmux (I'm thinking of switching from screen), but I'm having a hard time telling which pane is focused when I split a window into multiple panes. Is there a config customization or something that can highlight the focused pane a little more explicitly?

Answer 1

Here are the relevant settings:

pane-active-border-bg colour

pane-active-border-fg colour
    Set the pane border colour for the currently active pane.

So, try adding something like this to your ~/.tmux.conf:

set-option -g pane-active-border-fg blue

That will set a blue border around the active pane. The pane-active-border-bg option can be used for a more visible solution, as well.

Answer 2

As answered in another post it is now possible in tmux 2.1 to set the colours of individual panes. Ones can use:

set -g window-style 'fg=colour247,bg=colour236'
set -g window-active-style 'fg=colour250,bg=black'

in the ~/.tmux.conf file to show a difference between the active/inactive panes.

With Vim If you find it does not work with Vim panes, it might be down to the colourscheme you are using. First, try another colourscheme such as pablo. For further details, see the other post.

Answer 3

Customize status-left and use the #P character pair, which is the pane number. You will probably want to include more than just the pane number in the status bar, but here is an example of the line you would add to your ~/.tmux.conf for just the pane number:

set-option -g status-left '#P'

See the tmux man page for more character pairs: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/en/man1/tmux.1.html

Answer 4

One Solution that works for me is to add a display-pane at the end of the hotkey for a pane switch. This displays all the pane numbers, with the current pane in a different color. You can also use <escape_key> + q to display pane numbers.

I use alt+h/j/k/l to switch between panes, and I use the following binding.

bind -n M-j select-pane -D \; display-pane                                                                                                                                                                                                               
bind -n M-k select-pane -U \; display-pane                                                                                                                                                                                                               
bind -n M-h select-pane -L \; display-pane                                                                                                                                                                                                               
bind -n M-l select-pane -R \; display-pane