The Right-Click Menu

Right-clicking in Zellij opens a menu with actions for what was clicked. There are three menus:

• pane: opened by right-clicking inside a pane or on its frame
• tab: opened by right-clicking a tab in the tab bar
• bar: opened by right-clicking the background of a bar (eg. the tab bar or the status bar)

Items that do the same as a keybinding show that keybinding next to them. Items that do not apply where the menu was opened are left out: for example "Paste" when there is nothing to paste, "Show bars" when no bar is hidden, or "Show titles in a row" outside of a stack.

The menu itself is drawn by a plugin, see the context-menu alias.

Turning the menu off

The menu is turned off with the context_menu_enabled option:

context_menu_enabled false

When it is off, right clicks go to the focused pane only, and Alt + right click clears the pane group. Plugins can still open the menu through their API.

Changing the items

The items are set in the context_menu block of the configuration file. It has one section for each menu (pane, tab and bar), and a common section whose items are added to the end of every menu, after a separator.

Without clear-defaults, a section changes the default items of its menu with these statements:

remove ignores labels that do not exist, and an item placed after or before a label that does not exist goes to the end.

For example, this adds an item to the pane menu after "New floating pane", and removes "Mute pane":

context_menu {
    pane {
        item "Edit scrollback" after="New floating pane" { EditScrollback; }
        remove "Mute pane"
    }
}

Replacing the default items

clear-defaults=true on a section replaces the default items of that section with the items listed in it. On the whole block, it replaces the default items of every section:

context_menu {
    tab clear-defaults=true {
        item "Rename tab…" { StartRenameTabByTabId; }
        separator
        item "Close tab" { CloseTabById; }
    }
}

An empty context_menu clear-defaults=true {} leaves the menu empty, so it never opens, but Zellij still takes right clicks. To give right clicks back to the panes, use context_menu_enabled false instead.

Items

An item has a label and one or more actions, the same actions that can be bound to keys. The actions run in order when the item is chosen.

An item can also have a toggled_label, shown instead of the label while the thing the item toggles is on. For example, this item shows "Exit fullscreen" while the clicked pane is fullscreen:

item "Fullscreen" toggled_label="Exit fullscreen" { ToggleFocusFullscreenByPaneId; }

Actions on the clicked pane or tab

These actions, written without a pane or tab id, apply to the pane or tab that was right-clicked rather than to the focused one:

Any other action applies as it would from a keybinding.

Placeholders in labels

Two kinds of items can have {} in their label:

• An item that runs HideBarByPaneId: {} is replaced by the name of the clicked bar (eg. "Hide {}" becomes "Hide tab bar").
• An item that runs ToggleSession: {} is replaced by the name of the previous session. Without {}, the name is added to the end of the label. The item is left out when there is no previous session.

The default menu

These are the default items:

context_menu {
    pane {
        item "Paste" { PasteFromClipboardByPaneId; }
        separator
        item "New pane" { NewPane; }
        item "New floating pane" { NewFloatingPane; }
        separator
        item "Rename pane…" { StartRenamePaneByPaneId; }
        item "Fullscreen" toggled_label="Exit fullscreen" { ToggleFocusFullscreenByPaneId; }
        item "Make floating" toggled_label="Make tiled" { TogglePaneEmbedOrFloatingByPaneId; }
        item "Show titles in a row" toggled_label="Show titles in a column" { ToggleStackListOrientationByPaneId; }
        separator
        item "Watch pane" toggled_label="Stop watching" { WatchPaneByPaneId; }
        item "Mute pane" toggled_label="Unmute pane" { MutePaneByPaneId; }
        separator
        item "Close pane" { CloseFocusByPaneId; }
    }
    tab {
        item "New tab" { NewTab; }
        item "Rename tab…" { StartRenameTabByTabId; }
        item "Move left" { MoveTabByTabId "left"; }
        item "Move right" { MoveTabByTabId "right"; }
        item "Move to start" { MoveTabToPosition "start"; }
        item "Move to end" { MoveTabToPosition "end"; }
        item "Mute tab" toggled_label="Unmute tab" { MuteTabByTabId; }
        separator
        item "Close tab" { CloseTabById; }
    }
    bar {
        item "New tab" { NewTab; }
        separator
        item "Rename session…" { SwitchToMode "RenameSession"; SessionNameInput 0; }
        item "Back to {}" { ToggleSession; }
        item "Session manager…" {
            LaunchOrFocusPlugin "session-manager" {
                floating true
                move_to_focused_tab true
            }
        }
        item "Open in a Zellij terminal" { OpenSessionInTerminal; }
        separator
        item "Hide {}" { HideBarByPaneId; }
        item "Hide all bars" { HideBars; }
        separator
        item "Detach" { Detach; }
    }
    common {
        item "Show bars" { ShowBars; }
        item "Settings…" {
            LaunchOrFocusPlugin "configuration" {
                floating true
                move_to_focused_tab true
            }
        }
    }
}

The "Watch pane" and "Mute pane" items are left out when attention is turned off. "Open in a Zellij terminal" is only shown when a Zellij terminal window can be opened.

Editing the menu from the settings screen

The items can also be added, removed, changed and reordered in the "Right-click menu" page of the settings screen. When saved, each changed section is written to the context_menu block as changes to its default items, using the statements above. A section that cannot be written that way is written in full, with clear-defaults=true.