Zellij tricks I use

2025-06-30

fzf menu to select sessions

You can use fzf to create a session selector, so that you can automatically enter an existing session or create a new one.

# Opens a fzf menu to attach to an existing Zellij session
# If none exists, will just create a new one
zj() {
  if ! type fzf &> /dev/null; then
    echo "fzf not found, installing..."
    brew install fzf
  fi

  local session
    session=$(
    {
        echo "New session" 
        zellij list-sessions --no-formatting | awk '{print $1}'
    } | fzf --exit-0 --no-sort --prompt="Select session > "
    )

  if [[ "$session" == "New session" ]]; then
    zellij
  elif [[ -n "$session" ]]; then
    zellij attach "$session"
  else
    :
  fi
}

Open a new tab with a command

You can open a new named tab, with a custom layout using a command.

Save the following as $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/zellij/layouts/git.kdl:

layout {
	tab name="git" {
		pane size=1 borderless=true {
    			plugin location="zellij:tab-bar"
		}
		pane {
    			command "lazygit"
		}
		pane size=2 borderless=true {
    			plugin location="zellij:status-bar"
		}
	}
}

Then add the alias to your ~/.zaliases file:

alias zj-git='nocorrect zellij action new-tab --name git --layout git'

Now if you type in zj-git, it will open a new tab called "git" with lazygit running.

Open a tab with panes suspended

I can create a layout with panes that are suspended. For example, the following command runs make run then make sh which starts the Docker services starts an interactive shell inside them;

layout {
	tab name="make" {
		pane size=1 borderless=true {
    			plugin location="zellij:tab-bar"
		}
		pane split_direction="vertical" {
			pane command="make" start_suspended=true {
    				args "start";
			}
			pane command="make" start_suspended=true {
    				args "sh";
			}
		}
		pane size=2 borderless=true {
    			plugin location="zellij:status-bar"
		}
	}
}

Because make start subscribes me to the logs, I don't want to run make sh in the same pane.