tmux-flip-pane

Flip only the split that contains the focused pane — vertical to horizontal or the other way around. The rest of your layout stays put. One job, done well.

Why bother? tmux already has M-1 through M-5 for preset layouts (even-horizontal, even-vertical, main-horizontal, main-vertical, tiled). Those are great when you want to nuke the whole window and apply a template. This plugin is for when you’ve got a custom layout and just want to flip one division: “this pane was beside that one, now put it below” (or above, left, right). No reshuffling of everything else.

Requirements: tmux, Python 3. Nothing fancy.

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Install

Option A: TPM (recommended)

Add to ~/.tmux.conf:

set -g @plugin 'y9938/tmux-flip-pane'

Then reload tmux and hit prefix + I to install. Default key: F.

Option B: Manual

1. Clone or download this repo (e.g. into ~/.tmux/plugins/tmux-flip-pane).
2. Make the script executable: chmod +x scripts/flip-pane.py.
3. In ~/.tmux.conf:

bind-key F run -b '/path/to/tmux-flip-pane/scripts/flip-pane.py'

Use the real path to flip-pane.py.

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Customize the key

TPM users: set the key before the plugin line (or in a separate config block that runs first):

set -g @flip-pane-key 'M-f'   # Meta+f instead of F
set -g @plugin 'y9938/tmux-flip-pane'

Manual users: change F in the bind-key line to whatever you like.

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Behaviour

• 2 panes: the split between them is flipped (e.g. side-by-side → stacked).
• 3+ panes: the split between the focused pane and one neighbour is flipped; the rest of the tree is unchanged.
• Single pane: nothing to flip, script exits quietly.
• On failure the script exits with code 1 — e.g. when the focused pane has pane_index 0, or when not running in a real tmux client.