Users express strong appreciation for Zellij's zero-configuration setup and integrated terminal features, while others criticize the project's expanding scope as feature creep that complicates maintenance and adoption. A secondary disagreement centers on whether the internal terminal implementation is a legitimate addition or an opaque binary blob derived from Alacritty.
14 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4zellij-org
zellij
Rust2021–2026
zellij-org / zellij
zellij
A terminal workspace with batteries included
39Distinct people
42Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
36KGitHub stars
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What it is
A terminal workspace with batteries included
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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, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year42 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-02-13 20:16:26 UTC to 2026-08-02 13:54:25 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 3 | 5 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 3 | 6 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 3 | 5 |
What Hacker News says
42 sourcesHEHellsMaddy·Aug 2, 2026Submission
Zellij: Support the Kitty Image Protocol
2 points · Open discussionhttps://zellij.dev/tutorials/basic-functionality/
If you're already a tmux expert then zellij is probably no big deal, and the "written in rust" part is more of a red-herring than the headline.
Firstly, it doesn't conflict with Ctrl-A by default (but I think that's actually `screen`), second it has mouse support, floating window, saved layouts, stacked tabs, session picker/manager, and take a look at the configuration mechanism: https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/blob/main/zellij-utils/...
...for some reason it's just feels "super-sensible", comfortable, and allows a lot of flexibility.
The concept of "booting layouts" (a very poor-man's `docker compose` ;-) is really interesting and powerful:
https://zellij.dev/documentation/layouts.html
https://zellij.dev/documentation/creating-a-layout.html
...and I've got like a total of like 1.5hrs
Read the rest
of zellij usage under my belt.
I've never been one to be super attached to screen/tmux, tried out byobu... none of them clicked in the same way with power, ease, and flexibility that zellij felt like it provided right away.
Again: this may be telling a vim user about the power of emacs, in which case just nod and smile and go about your day, but since these terminal multiplexers are effectively "just UX", then a "slightly different UX" may end up being in actuality the whole compelling product!
Zellij still can't hide/show the status bar on the fly[1] and doesn't support windows preview in the windows list mode. Just these two (and many more) things are enough to stop me from migrating from tmux.
[1] https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/issues/694
In Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)It does - and we spent an hour or so reading through the code and affordances to see if there might be a possible path.
The general response is that this user behavior, selecting/copying/saving-in-named-buffer is a very "tmux" like usage pattern the Zellij authors don't want to encourage in Zellij. Instead -they suggesting bringing your preferred Text Editor (emacs, vim, etc...) and doing the select / copy /paste in that.
The problems for me are - (A) I know how to select/copy/paste very well in tmux. Don't have the faintest clue how it's done in a text editor, (B) No (easy) ability to have multiple named buffers if you use a text editor, etc...
I summarized them here: https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/issues/947#issuecomment...
In Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)<button type="button"
class="download-hover"
onclick="location.href='https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/releases/latest/downloa...'">
linux download
</button>
Screaming into the void, I guess, but PSA. Don't use buttons for links. In my case, I couldn't right-click and copy the URL, but there are a lot of other reasons not to do this.
In Make tmux pretty and usable (2024)Zellij is now supported on Windows
4 points · Open discussionZellij 0.44.0 with native Windows support
2 points · Open discussionIt can help to recognize that tmux combines three kinds of functionality: 1. process persistence; 2. client attachment; 3. view layout. If you don't like how tmux works, there are alternatives. I prefer Zellij [1]. (It also can be informative to take a peek at dtach [2] and abduco [3].)
[1]: https://zellij.dev and https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij
[2]: https://github.com/crigler/dtach and https://dtach.sourceforge.net
[3]: https://github.com/martanne/abduco/issues/70
In Claude Code Remote ControlI like Zellij, but one point of friction I ran into was it not loading profile configurations like .zprofile. https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/issues/1434
In Zellij: A terminal workspace with batteries included0.41 included some "non-colliding keybind" option, and you can clear-defaults in the config now, so this issue might be fixed. I haven't tested it but I recall seeing news about it.
Last I tried it the bind issue and performance were sort of blockers for me, but it looks like both of those are moving forward.
https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/releases/tag/v0.41.0
In Customizing tmuxYou did not hit any of these (many) issues?
https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/issues?page=1
In Replacing tmux in my dev workflowNice, hope it will become cleaner code in time. I tried zellij multiple times but despite years of development it still misses many things tmux provides. Inability to show/hide status bar[1] is the most annoying.
[1] https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/issues/694
In Introducing tmux-rsZellij is a really nice, modern alternative to screen and tmux, and they've done a great job at having good defaults as well as making the UI easily discoverable. I'd highly recommend it to anyone else who felt dubious about the benefit-to-effort ratio of terminal multiplexers.
https://zellij.dev
https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij
In Multiple security issues in GNU Screenin complete agreement, with tools like fd getting more visibility!
we sponsored fd's development a while back and we occasionally sponsor terminal tool authors from time to time at Terminal Trove where we have more tools in the trove. (0)
we're currently sponsoring zellij which I encourage you to check out and sponsor! (1)
https://terminaltrove.com/ (0)
https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij (1)
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