Tmux Popup Hacks for Terminal Productivity

• Prot gave a talk “Computing in Freedom with GNU Emacs” at FLOSS @ Oxford on March 12. Great holistic intro to Emacs as a platform for freedom. Video and text available.

  https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-03-13-computing-in-freedom-with-gnu-emacs/ https://ogeer.org/ox/rec/emacs/

• 64-bit Hurd on Guix! The GNU Hurd now has x86_64 support and you can install it on bare metal via the Guix 1.5.0 installer. Still early (~0.9% of packages), but a real milestone.

  https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2026/the-64-bit-hurd/

• Emacs 31 is getting native frame transposition — built-in commands for rotating and flipping window layouts. No more custom elisp to rearrange your splits.

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43619437

• display-popup command basics
• Sizing: -w (width), -h (height) as percentage or cell count
• Positioning: -x, -y or -d for current pane center
• Closing: -E to close on exit, -EE to close on success only
• Binding to keys: bind + display-popup

# Basic popup running a command
tmux display-popup -w 80% -h 80% -E "command here"

# Popup anchored to current pane
tmux display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E "command"

Browse and preview files with fzf + bat.

Guix packages: fzf, bat

# fzf file browser with bat preview
tmux display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "fzf --preview 'bat --color=always --style=numbers {}'"

Open a file in your editor via fzf, popup closes when you’re done.

# Find and edit a file
tmux display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "fzf --preview 'bat --color=always {}' --bind 'enter:become($EDITOR {})'"

View diffs with syntax highlighting using git-delta.

Guix packages: git-delta, diff-so-fancy

# Git diff in a popup with delta
tmux display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "git diff | delta | less -R"

# Git log with diff preview
tmux display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "git log --oneline | fzf --preview 'git show {1} | delta'"

Quick at-a-glance view of working tree state.

# Simple git status
tmux display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 60% -h 60% -E \
  "git status && read -n1"

# Or use fzf to browse changed files with diff preview
tmux display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "git status -s | fzf --preview 'git diff {2} | delta'"

Search code with ripgrep, preview matches in context with bat.

Guix packages: ripgrep

# Ripgrep + fzf with preview
tmux display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "rg --line-number . | fzf --delimiter : \
    --preview 'bat --color=always --highlight-line {2} {1}' \
    --bind 'enter:become($EDITOR {1} +{2})'"

Wire everything to prefix-key combos in ~/.tmux.conf:

# Prefix-f: file browser
bind f display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "fzf --preview 'bat --color=always --style=numbers {}'"

# Prefix-e: find and edit
bind e display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "fzf --preview 'bat --color=always {}' --bind 'enter:become($EDITOR {})'"

# Prefix-g: git status
bind g display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "git status -s | fzf --preview 'git diff {2} | delta'"

# Prefix-d: git diff
bind d display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "git diff | delta | less -R"

# Prefix-/: search with ripgrep
bind / display-popup -d '#{pane_current_path}' -w 80% -h 80% -E \
  "rg --line-number . | fzf --delimiter : \
    --preview 'bat --color=always --highlight-line {2} {1}' \
    --bind 'enter:become($EDITOR {1} +{2})'"

• tmux popups: https://tmuxai.dev/tmux-popup/
• tmux wiki: https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki
• fzf: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
• bat: https://github.com/sharkdp/bat
• git-delta: https://github.com/dandavison/delta
• ripgrep: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep