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Updated on March 25, 2025 in #linux

Put All of Your Tmux Configs and Plugins in a .config/tmux Directory

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In just a few minutes you can have all of your Tmux related configs neatly tucked away outside of your root home directory.

Quick Jump:

It’s nice not to need ~/.tmux.conf or a ~/.tmux/ directory in your home directory.

As long as you have Tmux version 3.1+ which you can check with tmux -V then you can put your Tmux config in ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf and Tmux will use it out of the box.

Also if TPM (Tmux Plugin Manager) finds your Tmux config there it will install plugins into ~/.config/tmux/plugins without any additional configuration. Technically you can customize this default path too which is documented.

Sticking with the theme of putting all Tmux related configuration in 1 spot, you can configure Tmux Resurrect to save its state files to ~/.config/tmux/resurrect by adding set -g @resurrect-dir "~/.config/tmux/resurrect" to your tmux.conf. I have this in my dotfiles.

The video below goes over how to configure everything.

# Demo Video

Timestamps

  • 0:29 – Config directory for tmux and TPM
  • 1:22 – Getting tmux-resurrect to use this path
  • 1:57 – Bonus tip on sourcing files in your tmux.conf

Is this how you have Tmux configured? Let me know below.

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