Window

A window holds one or more panes and decides how they are arranged. Most of the time you want one of the five tmux presets and you can stop reading after the table. The rest of the page is about the raw layout string, which exists so that glaze save can give you back the exact geometry you had, warts and all.

Example#

window {
  name   = "ice-breaker"
  layout = "main-vertical"   # even-horizontal | even-vertical | main-horizontal | main-vertical | tiled | a raw tmux layout string
  focus  = true              # make this the active window

  starting_directory = "ice" # relative to the profile; the default value is the session directory

  hooks   = { "window-renamed" = "display 'trace detected'" }
  options = { "automatic-rename" = "off" }

  pane {
    # ...at least one pane is required
  }
}

Attributes#

Layout presets#

The default layout is tiled. There are five presets:

Glazier applies the layout after it creates every pane of the window. A pane size or adjust block then refines the result. See Pane.

Raw layout strings#

The layout attribute also accepts a raw tmux layout string, for example "bb62,80x24,0,0". This is the form that tmux itself reports for a window. The rules:

• glaze save captures this string from a live window. glaze up replays the string without change.
• Glazier validates the structure of the string at parse time. A malformed string is an error.
• The string must describe as many panes as the window declares. A mismatch is an error, because tmux applies such a layout only in part or rejects it.
• The four hex characters at the front are a checksum. Glazier does not check it. tmux recomputes it. If you edit the geometry by hand and make an error, tmux rejects the layout when up runs.
• A raw string fixes the size of every pane. In a window with a raw layout, Glazier ignores size and adjust and shows a warning that names the pane.

For a profile that you write by hand, use a named preset.

JSON layouts on tmux 3.9#

tmux 3.9 and later print a layout as JSON, for example {"V":2,"L":{"t":"h","w":80,"h":24,...}}. Glazier accepts this form too. glaze save writes the form that your tmux prints. A JSON layout has no checksum, but a profile with one needs tmux 3.9 or later. tmux 3.9 also accepts the classic string. To share a saved profile with users of an older tmux, replace the JSON layout with a named preset.

Why keep the raw string at all? tmux reports a window layout only as that coordinate string. It never says “this is main-vertical”, so save cannot recover a preset without guessing. Rather than guess or drop the geometry, save writes down exactly what tmux said and up hands it straight back. It is exact and it is unreadable, and the second part is why the presets exist.

Focus#

Set focus = true on one window to make it the active window after up. Set focus = true on one pane inside it to make that pane the active pane. glaze save captures both as focus = true.

A hook that renames the window#

A hook or an option in your tmux.conf can rename a window after Glazier creates it, for example set-hook -g after-new-window 'rename-window x'. up then shows a warning with the declared name and the new name. Glazier does not rename the window back, because your configuration can rename it again.