tmux.conf file not working?

If you updated your .tmux.conf file and find that it is not working, perhaps you have existing tmux session running. You need to exit all tmux sessions so that a new tmux server will start and (re)read the updated .tmux.conf file.

If you do not want to stop all tmux sessions, you can also issue the source-file command either from within tmux or use tmux at the command line.

 

# see what other tmuxes are running
ps -ef | grep tmux

# if control-b is your tmux prefix key, type:
c-b : source-file ~/.tmux.conf

# or at the command line:
tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf