Why Developers Are Switching to Sesh for Tmux

There's a particular kind of honesty in watching someone admit they built the wrong tool. The creator of Session X, a popular Tmux plugin with thousands of users, recently posted a video explaining why he's switching to Sesh—a competing session manager created by the same developer whose original script inspired Session X in the first place. It's the kind of circular evolution that happens when the best ideas keep getting refined.

The question isn't whether Sesh is better. According to the Session X creator himself, it is. The more interesting question is whether that matters to you.

What Session Managers Actually Do

Tmux has supported sessions since the beginning. The problem is usability. Most people use Tmux for tabs and split panes without realizing they could be running multiple workspaces—each with its own windows and splits—and switching between them. Tmux made this possible but didn't make it easy. That gap created the market for tools like Session X and Sesh.

Sesh comes from Josh Medeski, who previously built a simple script called T for session switching. He archived that to build something more capable. The result has nearly 2,000 GitHub stars and a feature set that reads more like a workspace automation tool than a session switcher.

The basic mechanics are straightforward: sesh list shows your sessions and your most-visited directories (via Zoxide, which is required). sesh connect switches to one. You can pipe the list through any fuzzy finder—fzf, Television, Charm's Gum—and you're working. Standard session manager territory.

But Sesh also includes sesh clone for duplicating project structures, sesh last for toggling between your two most recent sessions, and a configuration system that lets you define session templates with specific windows, startup commands, and preview behaviors. As the video creator puts it: "This thing pops, switches, and does all the usual stuff you'd expect from a modern session manager, but it goes the extra mile."

The Configurability Question

Sesh stores its configuration in a TOML file at ~/.config/sesh/sesh.toml. You can blacklist sessions you never want to see (useful for utility sessions that run in the background). You can set default preview and startup commands for all new sessions. You can define session templates that appear in your list ready to launch.

Want a session that always opens your Tmux config in Neovim? Define it once:

[[session]]
name = "tmux-config"
path = "~/.config/tmux"
startup_command = "nvim tmux.conf"

Now it appears in your session list with a gear icon, and selecting it drops you into an editing session. The video demonstrates taking this further—sessions that launch specific Git workflows, preview commands showing file trees, windows that open with LazyGit already running.

You can even configure individual windows within sessions. Want one session that always starts with three windows running different tools? Sesh handles that. The creator describes setting up automated pipelines: "I just had sesh automate any session exession to create change the path to it open gh-ash which in turn called word trunk, creating a tree for this PR, fetching the branch, and popping open code ready to review and fix the PR."

That sentence is worth reading twice. He's chaining Sesh into Git workflow automation that creates worktrees, fetches branches, and launches editors—all from a session selection. He immediately follows with: "Sometimes I stop myself and say hey man you went too far there but there are some workflows I just look at the terminal and smile at them."

Integration With Everything Else

Sesh integrates with Television (a TUI framework), various fuzzy finders, and—surprisingly—Raycast, the macOS launcher. Install the Raycast extension and you can launch preconfigured Tmux sessions from anywhere on your system without touching a terminal first. The video shows this working: a Raycast search that immediately opens Tmux in a specific session with templates applied.

The tool also works with Zoxide in a more sophisticated way than Session X does. Instead of just using Zoxide to resolve path names, Sesh treats your most-visited directories as potential sessions, making them immediately available in your fuzzy finder. The assumption is that if you visit a directory frequently, you probably want to work there.

The Tradeoffs

Session X installs through TPM (Tmux Plugin Manager) and works immediately. Sesh requires installing a standalone binary, setting up a configuration file, and understanding how the pieces connect. The video creator is clear about this: "If you don't care about that kind of level of tinkering, Session X is still a great option."

There's also the caching question. Sesh can cache session lists for speed on busy systems, but cached data means the list might show sessions you just killed. The creator disabled caching for this reason—he'd rather have current information than speed.

Some features he expected are missing. No built-in session renaming. No leader key customization for the fuzzy finder interface. He mentions these as "nitpicky stuff" but they're the kind of details that matter when you use something dozens of times daily.

Who This Is For

The video reveals its audience in how it's structured. It assumes you know what Tmux is, what worktrees are, why you'd want LazyGit in a dedicated window. It demonstrates Television and Charm's Gum as if these are tools you've obviously heard of. The creator mentions his "flows plugin" and "word trunk" workflows without explanation because his audience already knows.

If you're that person—if you have strong opinions about fuzzy finders and you're already chaining terminal tools together—Sesh gives you more surface area to work with. If you just want to switch between a few named workspaces without thinking about it, Session X does that with less setup.

The interesting pattern is that both tools exist and both have their place. The creator of Session X switching to Sesh doesn't invalidate Session X. It demonstrates that different complexity levels serve different needs. Sometimes the simpler tool is better. Sometimes you want the one that lets you automate PR reviews through session templates.

Sesh assumes you want to tinker. That's not everyone. But for people who do, it provides a deeper layer to work with than session management typically offers. Whether that's worth the configuration overhead depends entirely on how much time you spend in the terminal and whether you enjoy optimizing those workflows. There's no universal answer, which is probably why both tools have their constituencies.

—Bob Reynolds