Tmux is one of the most useful tool when it comes to using using a linux terminal.

Tmux is a terminal multiplexer, it allows a user to access multiple terminals (or windows), each running a separate program, while providing a single screen to work on. Tmux is useful for running more than one command-line program at the same time, increasing productivity and the way you work.

Let's consider a case where you have a lot of history in tmux panes with which has to be cleared. We need to send a command to all the panes in a window to clear history in all your panes.

Clear History of active pane in Tmux

You can clear history of your tmux pane by running the following commands inside the pane, Here, let's assume that your <prefix> is Ctrl-B, which is the default prefix.

Ctrl-B
:
clear-history

In case you are in the in the command line, you can run the following command in your shell-

tmux clear-history

You can also bind it to a keyboard shortcut, which makes clearing history easier, set this in your ~/.tmux.conf-

bind -n C-k clear-history

You have to reload changes in tmux config tmux.conf so that it reflects-

tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

So, now just do the following shortcut combination to clear history-

Ctrl-B
Ctrl-K

Clear History of all panes in a Tmux Window

You can use <prefix> :setw synchronize-panes on to set the ability to send commands to all panes. All panes in the given window are all now synchronized to receive the same command.

Here, let's assume that your <prefix> is Ctrl-B, which is the default prefix.

Let's take an example, let's say you want to clear history across all panes in a window. You can do the follow set of commands-

Ctrl-B
:
setw synchronize-panes on
clear-history

To disable the synchronize-panes state, you can use the following command-

Ctrl-B
:
setw synchronize-panes off

You can also reset a tmux config in case you feel some of your tmux plugins are not working as expected and start with a clean config.

I hope you found this article useful, glad that you found it easy to clear one or more panes in Tmux. You can also check out the complete tmux cheatsheet of keyboard shortcuts and mouse shortcuts.