Zellij Is the Best Terminal Multiplexer

Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement!

Mouse Mode¶

By default Zellij captures mouse events (click to switch panes/tabs, drag borders to resize, wheel to scroll scrollback). The command

zellij options --disable-mouse-mode

turns mouse handling off for the session, handing the mouse back to your terminal emulator and the program running inside the pane. The main reason to do this is text selection / copy-paste: with mouse mode on you usually have to hold Shift to select text, while disabling it restores native terminal selection. The tradeoff is you lose click-to-focus panes, drag-resize, and wheel scrolling of Zellij’s scrollback.

To make it permanent, set it in ~/.config/zellij/config.kdl instead:

mouse_mode false

Session Management¶

zellij -l welcome

Filepicker¶

filepick is cool but doesn’t seem to be as useful as your ffd & fcd, etc

zellij run -f -- plugin filepicker

zellij run -- plugin filepicker

zpipe filepicker | xargs -I {} cp {} ./destination-folder/

zpipe filepicker | xargs -I {} $EDITOR {}

In Zellij, the filepicker is an alias for the built-in filesystem navigator plugin, Strider. Reworked significantly starting with version 0.40.0, it allows you to quickly browse files, fuzzy-find, and jump right into editing.

Depending on how you want to use it, here is how to launch and pipe data through it:

1. Launching the Filepicker Directly¶

You can open the filepicker inside a new floating or tiled pane directly from your terminal:

As a floating pane:

zellij run -f -- plugin filepicker

As a tiled pane:

zellij run -- plugin filepicker

2. Using the Filepicker with CLI Pipes (`zpipe`)¶

Zellij supports terminal pipes, which means you can pass the path chosen in the filepicker directly to another CLI utility or text editor.

For example, to pick a file and immediately copy it:

zpipe filepicker | xargs -I {} cp {} ./destination-folder/

Or to open the selected file in your default $EDITOR:

zpipe filepicker | xargs -I {} $EDITOR {}

3. Custom Keybindings¶

If you want to pull up the filepicker with a quick keyboard shortcut, you can add a binding to your Zellij configuration file (config.kdl).

Add this under the shared_except "locked" block to launch it in a floating pane with Alt + f:

keybinds {
    shared_except "locked" {
        bind "Alt f" {
            LaunchOrFocusPlugin "filepicker" {
                floating true
                move_to_focused_pane true
            }
        }
    }
}

4. Overriding the Default Filepicker¶

Because filepicker is an alias in Zellij, you aren’t locked into using Strider. If you prefer a full-featured terminal file manager like yazi or ranger, you can redefine the alias in your config.kdl:

plugins {
    filepicker url="file:/path/to/your/custom/picker_plugin.wasm"
}