Zellij

Zellij is a Rust terminal workspace manager from the zellij-org community, positioned as the approachable alternative to tmux and screen. Like those tools it splits your terminal into panes, groups panes into tabs, and keeps sessions alive on a background server so they survive terminal crashes and network drops, with detach and reattach commands built in. What sets it apart is discoverability: a context-aware status bar shows the available keybindings for whatever mode you are in, so you never have to memorize Ctrl-b sequences to get started.

Beyond the basics, Zellij adds things tmux never had: floating panes for temporary tasks, declarative KDL layout files that spin up a full workspace with one command, a WebAssembly plugin system so extensions run in a sandbox (plugins exist for tabs, status bars, session management, and file picking), true multi-user sessions with colored cursors, and a built-in web client for browser access. There are no published independent benchmarks for its performance claims; they are provider-stated and broadly consistent with Rust-based tooling.

Install via Homebrew (brew install zellij), cargo (cargo install --locked zellij), or your distro package manager. Run zellij to start a session, zellij -s name for a named session, and zellij attach name to reattach. Key modes: Ctrl-p for panes, Ctrl-t for tabs, Ctrl-o for session controls. Define layouts in ~/.config/zellij/config.kdl and launch them with zellij --layout name.