openmux vs p2pmux

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.

p2pmux is a free peer-to-peer terminal multiplexer for connecting people and machines to one shared session. Each pane runs a real shell on the machine of the person who opened it, using that host's tools and environment. Shared sessions can have up to 8 members, 9 tabs, and 8 panes per tab, with nested splits. Terminal streaming is end-to-end encrypted and peer-to-peer, with an iroh relay available when NAT requires it. If the coordinator laptop closes, panes on other machines continue running, but layout changes and new joins pause. Processes and credential files remain on the pane host rather than being uploaded to peers. The agent inbox can show detected coding agents and open a pane for terminal input. Anyone with a join code or ticket can see every pane and interact with terminals; join codes last six hours. The project supports macOS and Linux, not Windows. Linux builds require glibc 2.35 or newer, while musl systems must build from source. It is released under the MIT license.