KOKolenCh·Jun 12, 2026
How would this compare to shpool: https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool
In Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghosttyshell-pool
shpool
Rust2024–2026
shell-pool / shpool
shpool
Think tmux, then aim... lower
11Distinct people
14Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
2KGitHub stars
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What it is
Think tmux, then aim... lower
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
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HN mentions by month14 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2024-06-13 13:22:29 UTC to 2026-06-12 09:06:09 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 2024 | 2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 1 | 7 |
| Jul 2024 | 2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2024 | 2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2024 | 2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2024 | 2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2024 | 2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2024 | 2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2025 | 2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2025 | 2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr 2025 | 2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2025 | 2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2025 | 2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2025 | 2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2025 | 2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Sep 2025 | 2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2025 | 2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2025 | 2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2025 | 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2026 | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2026 | 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2026 | 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2026 | 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| May 2026 | 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2026 | 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
14 sourcesCheck out shpool, whose tagline is "Think tmux, then aim... lower" :-)
https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool
In Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)iTerm2 has a feature where it can display tmux tabs as native tabs [0] which is called tmux control mode [1] (most other terminal emulators haven't picked up this feature [2], but I wish they did).
Would it make sense for Zellij to also support the tmux control mode protocol, and interoperate with terminal emulators that support it?
Another thing (less ambitious): is it possible to have an option to integrate with native scrolling? Like shpool [3] does. I suppose it's not possible to enable it by default since it has a frame around the session, but maybe this frame could be disabled if I want native scrolling back? Native scrolling helps mainly with navigating by clicking on the native scrollbar that most terminal emulators have (mouse scrolling works on Zellij though, which is very cool).
[0] https://iterm2.com/documentation-tmux-integra
Read the rest
These days i quite like using shpool: https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool
I used to use mosh, tmux before but always got annoyed how they broke scrolling , searching etc.. Especially when yakuake already provides half the functionality i used to rely on tmux for..
In Mosh Mobile Shell[edit]
The below is fixed (https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool/pull/213/files) upstream already, but is pending a release.
I never heard of shpool, so just tried it. shpool completely breaks my PROMPT_COMMAND because it assumes that each word (in the shell sense) is a separate command. My PROMPT_COMMAND included "history -a" thus causing it to run "history" and "-a" on every prompt, making things quite unusable.
It's quite maddening because all they had to do was write a lot less code to fix it:
eval "${SHPOOL__OLD_PROMPT_COMMAND}"
Would run the old prompt command just nicely instead of the much longer:
for prompt_hook in ${SHPOOL__OLD_PROMPT_COMMAND};
do
${prompt_hook};
done;
In Replacing tmux in my dev workflowI have the same exact gripes with tmux/screen, and I have a similar workflow requirements as you do. I'm currently using Shpool (https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool), which checks all the checkboxes you mention.
In Tmux – The Essentials (2019)Oh, thanks for catching this. I'll clean it up https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool/pull/43
In Show HN: Shpool, a Lightweight Tmux Alternativewhat is going on with this submodule URI? https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool/blob/v0.6.1/.gitmodules...
I'm guessing based on the Change-Id in its commit message <https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool/commit/6cef5782e358716a...> this was exported from some internal Google repo but for the rest of the world it makes $(git clone --recursive) real mad
In Show HN: Shpool, a Lightweight Tmux AlternativeYou definitely don't need the in-memory terminal emulator to handle resizes or allow attaching with multiple local terminal emulators, since dtach does both and does not have an in-memory terminal emulator.
> I'm actually confused about why they'd go to the effort of implementing a VT100 emulator, write the code to redraw the screen from it
Well, we kinda cheated here. shpool_vt100 is just the already existing vt100 crate with a single critical bug fixed, so it actually wasn't much work :). Turns out having a nice package manager for a systems language comes with some benefits.
I'm actually open to adding a feature to allow multiple simultaneous connections to a single session. I never really had a usecase for it personally so I haven't prioritized it, but it is something that similar tools support and people keep bringing up. Since this
Read the rest
isn't the first time I've heard people talking about it, I just made https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool/issues/40 to track work adding the ability to attach multiple clients to the same session.
> This feels like it sits in a weird place between simple, crude tools like dtach, and tools like tmux; shpool has done most of the work to implement tmux-style behavior, and then decides to cut weird corners.
I'm not aware of any tool that does internal rendering and subsetting handling scrollback and copy-paste in a way that I personally find usable, so these decisions were very much intentional.
I think tmux is a great tool for a lot of people, and I tried to get into it for years, but I could just never get over the weird scrollback and copy-paste issues or the fact that it meant that I couldn't use my normal `i3`/`sway` bindings to switch between terminals inside a tmux session. If tmux works for someone, I think that's great and they should keep using it. shpool is meant for people like me who aren't very good with computers :).
I had to do this:
git clone https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool.git
cd shpool
sudo apt install libpam0g-dev
# you may need to install build-essential and other packages too as the
# build-depends field in debian/control is incomplete
dpkg-buildpackage -b
sudo apt install ../shpool_0.6.2_amd64.deb
systemctl --user enable shpool
systemctl --user start shpool
In Show HN: Shpool, a Lightweight Tmux AlternativeThere's a "debian" folder, I suspect it's trivial to build a Deb and manually install?
Seems to have pretty modest install dependencies?
https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool/blob/master/debian/cont...
In Show HN: Shpool, a Lightweight Tmux AlternativeScreen is discussed along with tmux in the [comparison section](https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool#tmux-and-gnu-screen) of the README. For most of the section I just say `tmux` because saying `tmux` or `screen` can get annoying and they have a very similar set of features.
In Show HN: Shpool, a Lightweight Tmux AlternativeThe readme contains a brief comparison to dtach: https://github.com/shell-pool/shpool?tab=readme-ov-file#dtac...
IIUC, the main difference is that shpool maintains an in-memory copy of terminal state that it can use to re-draw after a reconnect, so you don't lose all your scrollback.
In Show HN: Shpool, a Lightweight Tmux AlternativeShow HN: Shpool, a Lightweight Tmux Alternative
shpool is a terminal session persistence tool developed internally at google to support remote workflows, which we have open sourced.
323 points · Open discussion