Tmux externalpipe

Easily pipe Tmux panes content into an external program of choice.

Background

Heavily inspired by st's externalpipe patch, tmux-externalpipe lets you define mappings to pipe the content of the current Tmux pane into an external program of choice.

I am fond of similar plugins such as tmux-urlview or tmux-fpp, but when I found myself in need of creating a new one for cg -- which, as expected, turned out being 1% custom and 99% copypasta -- I decided it was time for something more generic, and reusable.

enters tmux-externalpipe..

Install

Clone the repo:

> git clone https://github.com/iamFIREcracker/tmux-externalpipe ~/.tmux-plugins/tmux-externalpipe

Add this line to the bottom of .tmux.conf:

run-shell ~/.tmux-plugins/tmux-externalpipe/externalpipe.tmux

Configuration

How do I define custom mappings?

Defining a custom mapping is as easy as defining two options in your tmux.conf: one for the external program (i.e. @externalpipe-$name-cmd), and one for the mapping key (i.e. @externalpipe-$name-key) -- replace $name with a mnemonic for the mapping you are about to create (e.g. urlview, or cg).

For example, how to pipe the current Tmux pane into urlview, on prefix + u?

Put the following in tmux.conf:

set -g @externalpipe-urlview-cmd 'urlview'
set -g @externalpipe-urlview-key 'u'

Reload Tmux, and that's it: hitting prefix + u should now prompt you with urlview link selection screen.

Other examples can be found at the bottom of my tmux.conf:

# tmux-externalpipe
set -g @externalpipe-cg-cmd      'cg-fzf'
set -g @externalpipe-cg-key      'Enter'
set -g @externalpipe-fpp-cmd     'fpp'
set -g @externalpipe-fpp-key     'p'
set -g @externalpipe-urlview-cmd 'urlview'
set -g @externalpipe-urlview-key 'u'
run-shell ~/.tmux-plugins/tmux-externalpipe/externalpipe.tmux