tmux Alternatives for Mac

There are many alternatives to tmux for Mac if you are looking for a replacement. The best Mac alternative is GNU Screen, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 10 alternatives to tmux and seven of them are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Mac alternatives to tmux are WezTerm, byobu, Zellij and RMUX.

filter to find the best alternatives

tmux alternatives are mainly Terminal Emulators, but if you're looking for Window Managers or Shells you can filter on that. Other popular filters include Mac. These are just examples - use the filter bar below to find more specific alternatives to tmux.
Copy a direct link to this comment to your clipboard
tmux alternatives page was last updated

Alternatives list

  1. GNU Screen icon
     90 likes

    Offers full-screen terminal multiplexing with independent windows, VT100 emulation, scrollback, and copy-paste. Supports ANSI standards, detaching, and persistent background process execution for shells or commands across Unix-like systems.

    12 GNU Screen alternatives

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
     
    |
    1
  2. WezTerm icon
     23 likes

    A GPU-accelerated cross-platform terminal emulator and multiplexer written by @wez and implemented in Rust

    113 WezTerm alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  3. byobu icon
     24 likes

    Byobu is a GPLv3 open source text-based window manager and terminal multiplexer. It was originally designed to provide elegant enhancements to the otherwise functional, plain, practical GNU Screen , for the Ubuntu server distribution.

    9 byobu alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
     
    |
    1
  4. Zellij icon
     8 likes

    Zellij is a terminal workspace. It has the base functionality of a terminal multiplexer (similar to tmux or screen) but includes many built-in features that would allow users to extend it and create their own personalized environment.

    11 Zellij alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
     
  5. RMUX icon
     3 likes

    Universal Rust multiplexer for the agentic era: detachable, scriptable, and inspectable, with a tmux-compatible CLI, daemon-backed SDK, and native Ratatui integration.

    15 RMUX alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Rust
     
  6. Automatically tiles and organizes all terminal sessions in one native macOS window, scaling layouts from fullscreen to grid, grouping sessions by project with color-coding, enabling instant filtering, supporting any CLI tool, and requiring zero configuration.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
     
  7. abduco icon
     2 likes

    abduco provides session management i.e. it allows programs to be run independently from their controlling terminal. That is programs can be detached - run in the background - and then later reattached. Together with dvtm it provides a simpler and cleaner alternative to tmux or...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (ISC)

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
     
7 of 7 tmux alternatives