Move to Harness

Bring useful terminal settings and tmux habits without assuming every option is interchangeable.

Harness 2.0.12 min read
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Bring colors and font choices

The terminal-config importer can bring supported colors, the ANSI palette, font face, opacity, blur, padding, cursor preferences, copy-on-select, Option-key behavior, and the default shell. Font size does not transfer; it remains a Harness setting.

Compatible config is considered on first run. Later source-config changes are reapplied only when you have not customized Harness visual settings. Otherwise Harness preserves your appearance choices.

Re-import deliberately

Use Settings → Appearance → Restore Defaults to reseed from imported configuration, or run source-config. In Full Terminal mode, the default prefix followed by r is the corresponding shortcut.

Bring the useful muscle memory

Choose Full Terminal for prefix controls, status line, copy mode, paste buffers, and attach/detach. The default prefix is Ctrl-A, not tmux’s usual Ctrl-B; change it in Settings → Keys.

Familiar workflowHarness equivalent
Attach a full session layoutharness-cli attach-window
Create a tabharness-cli new-tab
Split side-by-sideharness-cli split-window -h
Capture a paneharness-cli capture-pane
Inspect bindingsharness-cli list-keys

Harness has its own daemon and does not require a tmux server. It provides many familiar commands but is not a promise of complete tmux behavioral parity.

Port configuration in small pieces

Bindings, options, environment settings, and supported one-shot commands can be read through source-file. Try a small file rather than blindly loading an entire plugin-heavy .tmux.conf:

Example ~/.harness.conf
bind | split-window -h
bind - split-window -v
set -g base-index 1
set -g status-left " #{session_name} "

From the Harness command prompt (prefix then :), run:

Harness command prompt
source-file ~/.harness.conf

Register terminal handlers

Settings → Terminal → Default terminal can register Harness for SSH, Telnet, and man-page links and for .command/.tool files. macOS does not provide one universal switch that forces every application’s terminal-opening behavior to use the same app.

Preview and undo settings imports

  1. Choose Harness → Import Terminal Settings… and review the supported differences.
  2. Select the values you want. Customized settings and shortcut imports start unchecked.
  3. Read the skipped-key explanations before applying. Executable and unsupported bindings are not imported.

Supported declarative shortcuts include new tabs/windows, splits, and pane zoom. Undo Last Settings Import restores imported values only while they still match the imported state, preserving your later edits. Font face can carry over; font size remains Harness-owned.

Source references Harness 2.0.1

Checked against the immutable shipping commit for Harness 2.0.1. For other versions, consult the installed CLI’s help and schemas.