tmux control mode, distilled

Native iTerm2 tabs that survive disconnects.

smux is a minimal, reliability-first server for the tmux control-mode protocol. It gives iTerm2 persistent remote sessions without bringing along the rest of tmux.

Persistent sessions
Native tabs
Scrollback restore
Single binary

One-line installlatest

curl -fsSL https://smux.expt.sh/install.sh | bash

Detects Linux or macOS and amd64 or arm64, then installs the latest release to /usr/local/bin/smux.

$ ssh myhost -t 'smux -CC a || smux -CC'
# disconnect, reconnect, and your tabs return
$ smux ls
0: 3 windows

Sessions stay server-side

An SSH drop only disconnects the client. Shells, processes, tab layouts, and scrollback keep running on the remote host.

Built for iTerm2

It speaks the control-mode wire protocol iTerm2 expects, including its startup probes, window lifecycle, input, and resize commands.

Intentionally narrow

No panes, status bar, key bindings, configuration, or scripting—just the reliable subset needed for native remote tabs.

Direct downloads

Choose a platform manually. These links follow the latest tagged release from the official GitHub repository.

Linux · amd64↓ Linux · arm64↓ macOS · Intel↓ macOS · Apple silicon↓