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GNU Screen vs openmux

GNU Screen

gnu.org

openmux

github.com

Side by side

FigureGNU Screenopenmux
Price from—Free
Free plan—Yes
Free trial——
Open source——
macOS—Yes
Linux—Yes
Self-hosted—Yes
Plans published01
Spec score · Terminal Multiplexers5.7 (#29)8.2 (#5)

Plans

GNU Screen

No plans published.

GNU Screen pricing →

openmux

  • openmuxFree

openmux pricing →

In their own words

GNU Screen

GNU Screen has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

Visit gnu.org

openmux

openmux is a terminal multiplexer for Linux and macOS, with vertical, horizontal, and stacked pane layouts and nine workspaces. Each workspace can keep its own pane arrangement. Vim-style hjkl navigation and a Ctrl+b prefix provide two ways to control panes. Sessions preserve workspace layouts and pane working directories; users can detach while a background shim keeps running, then reattach from another client. The project also offers an aggregate PTY browser for filtering and previewing terminals by process, directory, or Git branch. Terminal features include mouse tracking, scrollback, pane zoom, and Kitty graphics support for image rendering, pixel sizing, and SSH-aware offloading. Its CLI handles session and pane operations such as creating sessions, splitting panes, sending text, capturing output, and listing sessions as JSON. Configuration changes for layout, theme, and keybindings hot-reload while openmux is running. The MIT-licensed project is listed at free. Installation options include a curl script, npm, Bun, source build, or prebuilt binaries for macOS Apple Silicon and Linux x64 or arm64.

Visit github.com