Make your own cheatsheet for bindings you need. This way you learn faster and optimize for your own needs. Tmux is exceptional mouseless, though personally I prefer combining with mouse.

With xclip, mouse and copy/paste can work over SSH-forwarded X-sessions with C-y and Enter from copy-mode-vi so:

  # For older versions of tmux:
  #setw -g mode-mouse on
  #set -g mouse-resize-pane on
  #set -g mouse-select-pane on
  #set -g mouse-select-window on
  # For newer versions of tmux:
  set -g mouse on
  bind -n WheelUpPane if-shell -F -t = "#{mouse_any_flag}" "send-keys -M" "if -Ft= '#{pane_in_mode}' 'send-keys -M' 'select-pane -t=; copy-mode -e; #send-keys -M'"
  bind -n WheelDownPane select-pane -t= \; send-keys -M

  set -g set-clipboard on
  # With xclip
  bind-key -n C-y run "tmux show-buffer | xclip -selection clipboard -i >/dev/null"
  #bind-key -n C-y run-shell "tmux save-buffer - | xclip -i -selection clipboard >/dev/null"
  # For tmux 2.4+
  bind-key -T copy-mode-vi Enter send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel 'xclip -selection clipboard -i'

For Windows vcxsrv is the simplest and most fool-proof X-Windows server. Anything else on Windows may result in pain.

My preference is to reduce visual clutter in tmux by tweaking config and mostly just follow built-in bindings so workflow mostly works on standard tmux as well.

When clipboard fails between environments, sometimes multiple copy-ing, and then pasting into a text-editor helps (not a tmux issue, but clipboard-integrations).

I use tmux copycat paired with yank, which makes reverse searching and copy paste much easier.

https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-copycat

The other change is to use vi keys for highlight mode:

    # set highlight mode keys
    setw -g mode-keys vi
    bind Escape copy-mode

A typical scrollback cut and paste workflow for me is via this <ctrl-b>P mapping. I'm lazy I just grab everything.

   bind-key P command-prompt -p 'save history to filename:' -I '~/tmux.history' 'capture-pane -S -32768 ; save-buffer %1 ; delete-buffer'

then it's all in a file you can work with in an editor of your choice

C-b [ goes into copy mode,then you can traverse the screen with arrows.

C-Space marks a region, move arrows to select text, and M-w to copy to clipboard.

q to escape copy mode

    bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'v' send -X begin-selection
    bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'y' send -X copy-pipe-and- 
    cancel 'xclip -in -selection clipboard'

Works just like vim. Press v to go into visual mode, then y to yank the selection

I haven't got my config to hand, but essentially I've binded leader-y and leader-p to copy and paste respectively both using the system clipboard. Since doing that tmux has been so much more useful to me.

I had the very same problem. Especially, I could not jump to the string I wanted to copy. I wrote a tmux plugin for it https://github.com/schasse/tmux-jump Maybe it helps you too. Works great with https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-yank

You can achieve copy-pasting that isn't very different from a typical GUI without deviating too much from the defaults. If you use a sufficiently new version of tmux [1] and a terminal that supports it [2], you can just right click and drag your mouse to select and copy text into the clipboard. All you need to do is put the line 'set mouse on' in your configuration. If your terminal doesn't support this feature, you can do something like

    bind -Tcopy-mode-vi MouseDragEnd1Pane copy-pipe-and-cancel "if [ \"$(uname)\" = 'Darwin' ]; then pbcopy; else xclip; fi"

to achieve the same thing. It also looks like you can configure copy commands to pipe to a command of your choice with the upcoming version of tmux without having to override keybindings [3].

[1]: >= 2.4, maybe?

[2]: Any terminal that supports OSC52 (e.g, iTerm2)

[3]: https://github.com/tmux/tmux/commit/5aba26f2cb7aa9609a3c3d2b...

I use Emacs copy & paste, or readline. I don't do a lot of copy & paste between different windows though. Paste in works adequately (terminal stuffs it into keyboard buffer) but may need a reformat if the mode has autoindent, while I zoom the window (C-b z) and turn off line numbers to copy out.

If formatting is super important, I paste into a file with cat > file, and read the file into Emacs. I can do the same in reverse for a big copy out, and transfer the file.

I do these things because I often use Emacs in a ssh session instead of tramp, because I'm coming from a different OS or need to use modes with sidecar executables, e.g. enh-ruby-mode.

Tmux runs in a terminal; use `[` and `]` for my tmux buffer; and the terminals OS Copy/Paste integration when i need to get things in/out. Reading these threads I didn't realize the heartburn they felt with tmux.

For copying text I just hold down shift before click-selecting. Works fine. But if you need to select a long bit of text which scrolls beyond the screen then I use scp or rsync

shameless plug: I wrote a tool to copy text from tmux on remote host to local OS, this is often needed when you ssh into remote host, and want to copy large amount of text (e.g. more than one screen) to local OS

https://github.com/hujun-open/rclip

It's very similar to how it works in Emacs