wtf is tmux-flash?

tmux-flash is a plugin for tmux, a terminal multiplexer that lets you split your terminal into panes and switch between them, that brings a faster way to jump around and select text inside a terminal pane. It copies a navigation style from a popular text editor plugin called flash.nvim: you start typing a few characters, and every matching spot on screen gets a small label next to it that narrows as you type more. Pressing that label jumps your cursor straight there. If you already had a text selection going, the jump extends that selection to the new spot instead of replacing it. The README explains this did not really exist for tmux before. Other similar tools either only read a single typed character at a time due to a technical limitation, cancel your existing text selection when they jump, or only highlight specific patterns like web addresses or file paths rather than letting you search for any text you type. tmux's own built in search also searches your entire terminal history rather than just what is currently visible on screen, and does not use jump labels at all. Under the hood, since tmux normally cannot feed a running script a live stream of your keystrokes, tmux-flash works around this by temporarily swapping in a small helper program that takes over reading your keystrokes directly, while your original pane and its selection sit untouched in the background. Once you pick a match, the helper moves your real cursor there using ordinary cursor movements, which is what allows an existing selection to stretch to the new position rather than being lost. Installation is done either through the Tmux Plugin Manager or by cloning the repository manually and loading it from your tmux configuration file. It needs a reasonably recent version of tmux, Python 3, which comes preinstalled on macOS and most Linux systems, and vi style key bindings turned on in tmux's copy mode. The trigger key and the set of label characters used can both be customized in your tmux configuration.