Quit should also tear down the tmux session/window

[OverHash]

Summary

q currently quits the dmux UI/controller process, but it does not tear down the tmux window or tmux session that dmux is running in.

This means that after quitting dmux, the tmux window stays alive and the user must manually run something like:

tmux kill-window

or:

tmux kill-session -t <session-name>

to fully close it.

This behavior is surprising. From a user perspective, “Quit” can reasonably be interpreted as “shut down dmux”, not just “exit the controller UI and leave the tmux session behind”.

I'd like to open this issue to discuss and gather ideas about making q actually close the full tmux window, rather than just closing the dmux side of things.

Expected Behavior

There are at least two reasonable interpretations, but the current behavior is not obvious enough.

Option A: q should fully shut down dmux

Pressing q should:

• exit the dmux UI
• tear down the dmux tmux window or tmux session
• leave no orphaned dmux tmux window behind

This matches many users’ intuitive expectation of “Quit”.

Option B: keep current behavior, but make it explicit

If the intended behavior is to keep tmux alive so users can later resume, then dmux should make that clearer and potentially provide an explicit separate action for full shutdown.

For example:

• q = quit UI only / detach controller
• separate shortcut or menu action = shutdown session/window completely

Alternatively, maybe dmux can provide the exact tmux command after closing to help users close the tmux window?

[justin-schroeder]

I actually disagree on this one. I often quit dmux to do stuff, for example, upgrade dmux, but its nice knowing those will just keep on running. Maybe there is a way to totally quit?

[OverHash]

Maybe there is a way to totally quit?

Makes sense to me, I assumed that the behavior was intentional. I wonder if dmux could add something like "if there are no active panes, then fully close"? I don't think that exists, but seems logical to me to add if not. I'll take a look later.

[justin-schroeder]

That could be nice yeah, or maybe if you quit, it could ask you — how hard do you want to quit here buddy. like really quit, sorta quit. reboot your computer quit.