Install tmux on macOS without Homebrew

Many people (including me) don’t want to use Homebrew. But if you search online for “How to install tmux on macOS” you will found mostly Homebrew descriptions. So here now the very easy solution without.

Requirements

In case that Command Line Tools are not installed, execute following command and follow the installation steps in new popup window. This process can take some time, so be patient.

# install Command Line Tools
$ xcode-select --install

# verify installation (optional)
$ ls /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/

Installation

To execute next steps you need to download and unzip two release tarballs. Here you will found latest version of libevent and tmux (ncurses is already installed on macOS).

# change into unzipped libevent directory
$ cd Downloads/libevent-2.1.11-stable/

# check dependencies
$ ./configure

# build package
$ make

# install package
$ sudo make install

# change into unzipped tmux directory
$ cd Downloads/tmux-3.0a/

# check dependencies
$ ./configure

# build package
$ make

# install package
$ sudo make install

# show tmux version (optional)
$ tmux -V

That’s it already. If you’re new to tmux you should have a look on this Cheat Sheet.