AwesomeWM - Vim - Tmux Navigator

awesomewm-vim-tmux-navigator lets you navigate seamlessly between system windows, vim splits and tmux panes using a consisent set of hotkeys. Every vim split and tmux pane is treated like a standalone system window and you can forget your (n)vim/tmux specific navigation hotkeys. It also works for complex scenarios like embedded vim splits inside tmux panes.

The plugin is based on christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator and fogine/vim-i3wm-tmux-navigator.

How does it work

The plugin sends the correct keypresses based on the focused appplication. In order to differentitate between (n)vim and tmux clients, the title of your terminal is changed. Therefore your shell/terminal stack has to support dynamic titles.

Installation

AwesomeWM

Clone the repo.

git clone https://github.com/intrntbrn/awesomewm-vim-tmux-navigator ~/.config/awesome/awesomewm-vim-tmux-navigator

It's not recommended to change the path since it's hardcoded in other configuration files.

Add your preferred navigation (focus) keybinds to rc.lua (e.g. Mod4+arrow or Mod4+hjkl)

require("awesomewm-vim-tmux-navigator"){
        up    = {"Up", "k"},
        down  = {"Down", "j"},
        left  = {"Left", "h"},
        right = {"Right", "l"},
    }

Remove conflicting keybinds from your rc.lua.

Vim

Plug 'intrntbrn/awesomewm-vim-tmux-navigator'

Remove similar plugins (like christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator).

Tmux

Add the following to your tmux.conf.

# Set Terminal titles where possible
set-option -g set-titles on
set-option -g set-titles-string '#S: #W - TMUX'

# Smart pane switching with awareness of vim splits and system windows
is_vim="ps -o state= -o comm= -t '#{pane_tty}' \
	| grep -iqE '^[^TXZ ]+ +(\\S+\\/)?g?(view|n?vim?x?)(diff)?$'"
bind -n C-Left if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-h" "run-shell 'sh ~/.config/awesome/awesomewm-vim-tmux-navigator/tmux_focus.sh left'"
bind -n C-Down if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-j" "run-shell 'sh ~/.config/awesome/awesomewm-vim-tmux-navigator/tmux_focus.sh down'"
bind -n C-Up if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-k" "run-shell 'sh ~/.config/awesome/awesomewm-vim-tmux-navigator/tmux_focus.sh up'"
bind -n C-Right if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-l" "run-shell 'sh ~/.config/awesome/awesomewm-vim-tmux-navigator/tmux_focus.sh right'"

Troubleshooting

Most likely your terminal is xterm and does not support dynamic titles.

After a correct installation the title of a tmux session should end with "- TMUX" and "- VIM" or "- NVIM" for vim or nvim sessions respectively. You can check the title (property WM_NAME) by using xprop.