Differences at a Glance

(This page is written for people who already live in tmux. It assumes you know what a prefix, a pane, and a split are, and just want to know what's the same and what's different on Windows, in Conmux.)

The one-sentence version first

Conmux borrows tmux's feel — a leader key, then one command key to split panes, move focus, zoom — but it is not a drop-in replacement for tmux. It doesn't read your .tmux.conf, its command set is a small subset of tmux's, and it runs on a Windows-native foundation. So: your muscle memory mostly carries over, but don't expect to port your tmux config and have it just work.

Windows-native, no WSL required

This is Conmux's number-one reason to exist. tmux was never designed for Windows — to use it there, you first install a layer of WSL (the Linux subsystem), and then your tmux actually lives inside that Linux and can't manage processes on the Windows side.

Conmux runs directly on Windows' own pseudo-terminal (ConPTY), no WSL needed. PowerShell, native programs, AI agent CLIs — they're all panes supervised under one process tree. (Want to bring in tools from WSL too? You can — but that belongs to "cross-WSL unification" (M4) on the roadmap, which isn't built yet; there's a separate section on what's possible today.)

The leader key: `Ctrl+B` by default, and why not `Ctrl+Space`

Good news: Conmux's default leader is Ctrl+B, exactly the same as tmux's own default — zero onboarding cost for veterans.

We actually tried Ctrl+Space first (a tmux custom prefix a lot of people love). We hit a landmine: on Chinese Windows, Ctrl+Space is the IME's global "Chinese/English toggle" hotkey — the IME swallows it first and Conmux never receives it, so the leader is effectively dead in a Chinese environment. Hence the default went back to Ctrl+B to steer clear of it.

The leader key is configurable (in-app, persisted locally). The one hard constraint: the leader must include Ctrl or Alt — a bare key as leader would swallow every ordinary keystroke as a command and outright break your CLI, so that's not allowed.

Same small detail as tmux: pressing the leader twice (Ctrl+B then Ctrl+B) sends a literal prefix character into the current terminal — the equivalent of tmux's send-prefix.

Keybinding cheat sheet

Press the leader (default Ctrl+B), then the command key. Here's tmux vs. Conmux side by side:

What you want	tmux (default)	Conmux	Notes
Vertical split (side by side)	`prefix %`	`prefix \`	Conmux uses `\`, not `%`
Horizontal split (stacked)	`prefix "`	`prefix -`	Conmux uses `-`, not `"`
Move focus between panes	`prefix ←↑↓→`	`prefix ←↑↓→`	Same
Resize a pane	`prefix Ctrl+←↑↓→`	`prefix Shift+←↑↓→`	Conmux uses `Shift`+arrows
Zoom a pane to full screen (toggle)	`prefix z`	`prefix z`	Same
Jump to session N	`prefix 0..9` (switches windows)	`prefix 1..9`	Conmux jumps between sessions, starting at 1
Next / previous session	`prefix n` / `prefix p`	`prefix n` / `prefix p`	Same
Open the command palette	`prefix :` (command line)	`prefix :`	Conmux opens the in-app command palette

Honest note: this table covers exactly the leader commands Conmux has implemented — there is nothing more. tmux's session/window/pane three-level model, copy-mode, prefix [ paging and selection, the prefix d detach shortcut (Conmux's detach is closing the client window, not a keybinding), command aliases, custom bind-key bindings — none of these exist yet. Don't go down a tmux cheatsheet trying them one by one.

Leader-free direct shortcuts (opt-in, off by default)

Find the two-step leader tedious? Conmux offers a tier of leader-free direct shortcuts, one step and done:

Ctrl+Alt+H/J/K/L → move pane focus in vim directions
Ctrl+Alt+\ → vertical split · Ctrl+Alt+- → horizontal split · Ctrl+Alt+Z → zoom

But it's off by default — you have to explicitly enable it in settings. Why off by default: Conmux's core promise is "never break your CLI" — in the default state it intercepts exactly one key, the leader, and passes everything else through to the terminal untouched. Turning on direct shortcuts means letting it intercept a small handful of Ctrl+Alt combos too; that trades a bit of convenience against the purity of pass-through, so the choice is yours. (Also: genuine AltGr character composition is not intercepted, and non-US keyboard layouts won't have their input broken.)

Differences spelled out (don't step on these)

It doesn't read .tmux.conf. Conmux has no tmux config file parsing whatsoever. The leader key and direct shortcuts are configured in-app and stored locally — completely separate from tmux's config files.
The command set is a subset, not the full set. Most tmux features outside the table above don't exist; think of it as "a Windows-native multiplexer that borrows tmux's feel", not "tmux for Windows".
detach / attach semantics differ. In tmux, sessions live on the server and prefix d detaches; in Conmux you close the client window and the panes keep running in the background — the next attach replays the screen exactly as it was (scrollback plus terminal mode state included). But note: panes outlive the client, not the daemon — conmux kill-server or a daemon crash takes every pane down with it (that's the flip side of the "zero orphan processes" guarantee; the control plane chapter covers this in detail).
It's still young. Conmux is v0.1.x. The keys marked "Same" above are what's usable in the current implementation; the things marked "doesn't exist yet" genuinely don't. The manual flags these honestly, page by page — no selling the roadmap as the present.

Next up

Want to bring in tools from WSL? → Bringing In Tools from WSL
Want to drive it from code and automate? → Driving conmux from Code

The Conmux Manual