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wezterm cli

The cli subcommand interacts with a running wezterm GUI or multiplexer instance, and can be used to spawn programs and manipulate tabs and panes.

Targeting the correct instance

There may be multiple GUI processes running in addition to a multiplexer server. wezterm uses the following logic to decide which one it should connect to.

  • If the --prefer-mux flag is passed, then the wezterm.lua config file is consulted to determine the first unix domain defined by the config.
  • If the $WEZTERM_UNIX_SOCKET environment variable is set, use that location to identify the running instance
  • Try to locate a running GUI instance. The --class argument specifies an optional window class that can be used to select the appropriate GUI window if that GUI window was also spawned using --class to override the default.

Targeting Panes

Various subcommands target panes via a (typically optional) --pane-id argument.

The following rules are used to determine a pane if --pane-id is not specified:

  • If the $WEZTERM_PANE environment variable is set, it will be used
  • The list of clients is retrieved and sorted by the most recently interacted session. The focused pane id from that session is used

See also: wezterm cli list

Available Subcommands