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I'd like to have the current time in my tmux status line. I got as far as:

$ tmux set status-right '"#22T" %H:%M:%S %d-%b-%y'

This does alter the time in the status line to include seconds. However, the status line is only updated if "something happens": I switch windows, switch panes, etc. How can I configure tmux to update the status-line every second, so that I can have a running clock?

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2 Answers 2

up vote 3 down vote accepted

You could also use

tmux refresh-client -S

to manually refresh the status bar instead of relying on the refresh interval. I use it as an event driven update method, for instance when switching panes. In my .tmux.conf I changed the following:

bind -r k select-pane -U
bind -r j select-pane -D
bind -r l select-pane -R
bind -r h select-pane -L


bind -r k select-pane -U\; refresh-client -S
bind -r j select-pane -D\; refresh-client -S
bind -r l select-pane -R\; refresh-client -S
bind -r h select-pane -L\; refresh-client -S

ps: In case it makes a difference, I'm using tmux 1.8 at the moment.

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Set the status inverval so that it is updated every second:

tmux set status-interval 1
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But remember about CPU usage and battery life on a OSX Mavericks arstechnica.com/apple/2013/06/… –  vrybas Mar 1 at 3:16

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