As I’m forced to work from home on my laptop with no external screens at the moment, I have taken a moment to take a look at my tmux and vim configurations. What bothered me most was switching between tmux panes and vim splits as I had to remember which key strokes I need to switch. Then I found vim-tmux-navigator, which makes this a lot easier:

Configuration vim

Install the vim plugin using the plugin manager of your choice:

vundle

Using vundle you add the following line to your ~/.vimrc

Plugin 'christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator'

Then install the plugin inside vim:

:PluginInstall

$ cd ~/.vim/bundle
$ git clone https://github.com/christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator

# Smart pane switching with awareness of Vim splits. 
# See: https://github.com/christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator 
is_vim="ps -o state= -o comm= -t '#{pane_tty}' \
  | grep -iqE '^[^TXZ ]+ +(\\S+\\/)?g?(view|n?vim?x?)(diff)?$'" 
bind-key -n 'C-h' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-h' 'select-pane -L' 
bind-key -n 'C-j' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-j' 'select-pane -D' 
bind-key -n 'C-k' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-k' 'select-pane -U' 
bind-key -n 'C-l' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-l' 'select-pane -R' 
tmux_version='$(tmux -V | sed -En "s/^tmux ([0-9]+(.[0-9]+)?).*/\1/p")' if-shell -b '[ "$(echo "$tmux_version < 3.0" | bc)" = 1 ]' \
 "bind-key -n 'C-\\' if-shell \"$is_vim\" 'send-keys C-\\' 'select-pane -l'" 
if-shell -b '[ "$(echo "$tmux_version >= 3.0" | bc)" = 1 ]' \
 "bind-key -n 'C-\\' if-shell \"$is_vim\" 'send-keys C-\\\\' 'select-pane -l'" 
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'C-h' select-pane -L 
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'C-j' select-pane -D 
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'C-k' select-pane -U 
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'C-l' select-pane -R 
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'C-\' select-pane -l

Now you can easily switch beween windows using CTRL+hjkl