How to change the starting directory of a tmux session?

linux unix tmux
Adnan picture Adnan · Dec 5, 2014 · Viewed 14.5k times · Source

The directory where you start a tmux session in will be the directory that all new windows will start at.

My question is, how can you change this starting directory without closing your session?

Answer

chucksmash picture chucksmash · Apr 5, 2016

The way to do this is to detach from the session (^b d with the default keybindings) and then specify a different directory when you reattach to it. When attaching to a session, use the -c flag to specify the working directory. Here's an example:

$ tmux list-sessions
tmuxwtfbbq: 3 windows (created Tue Apr  5 14:25:48 2016) [190x49]
$ tmux attach-session -t tmuxwtfbbq -c /home/chuck/new_default_directory

This setting will be persisted - after you've reset the working directory, you won't need to keep specifying it every time you reattach to the session.

For the record, I'm on tmux version 2.0 (though I don't think it matters - I couldn't find anything about adding a -c option to the attach-session command in the change logs so I assume it's been there for quite a while).

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