tmux: Detect which process runs in the active pane

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Turns out tmux has powerful formatting capabilities for the list-panes command:

$ tmux list-panes -F '#{pane_active} #{pane_pid}'
0 4993
0 5382
1 6189

The command above will print

1 <process_pid>

for the active pane.

Fromatting options are described in man tmux:

 pane_active                     1 if active pane
 pane_pid                        PID of first process in pane

For the discussion of the term "first process in pane", see What does the "first pid of a pane" in tmux mean?

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Enuy
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Enuy

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

  • Enuy
    Enuy about 1 year

    Is there a way how to detect what process runs in the active pane?

    tmux: Find "my" window, check if it's active is related, however, it deals with the detection from within the pane.

    I need to detect this from an external command (not from within the tmux session).

    The problem most likely boils down to two steps:

    1. Detect which pane is active
    2. Detect what process runs in the given pane
    • x-yuri
      x-yuri over 5 years
      You can find my script helpful.