How to create a new session in tmux

Start a new named session:

Always name your sessions

A bare tmux gives you sessions named 0, 1, 2 — impossible to tell apart in a week. Names make tmux attach -t work and the prefix s picker actually useful.

The one command to remember

tmux new -As work attaches to "work" if it exists and creates it if it doesn't — idempotent, script-safe, and the best thing to put in your SSH workflow:

~/.tmux.conf
tmux new -As main

From inside tmux

Running tmux new inside tmux fails with "sessions should be nested with care". You don't want nesting — you want a new session on the same server: prefix : then new-session -s name, or from the shell tmux new -d -s name then switch with prefix s.

Related

Verified against tmux 3.6 · updated July 2026 · back to the full cheat sheet

[tmuxlab]
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