How to open a floating popup window in tmux
Run any command in a floating window over your panes (tmux ≥ 3.2):
The flags that matter
-E closes the popup when the command exits. -w and -h set size (-w 90% -h 90%), -d sets the working directory. Without a command you get an interactive shell in the popup.
Popular popup bindings
Floating scratch terminal, lazygit, and a session switcher — this is the feature most "is tmux still good?" people don't know exists:
~/.tmux.conf
bind g display-popup -E -w 90% -h 90% lazygit
bind C-t display-popup -E -w 80% -h 75%
bind C-j display-popup -E "tmux ls -F '#S' | fzf | xargs tmux switch-client -t"Version note
Popups arrived in tmux 3.2 (2021). If display-popup errors with "unknown command", check tmux -V — Ubuntu LTS ships old versions; install from source or a PPA.
Related
Verified against tmux 3.6 · updated July 2026 · back to the full cheat sheet