Ranger is a console based file explorer that uses vim bindings. This makes it a very intuitive choice for any vimmer when they’re looking for a file explorer. I also use tmux and was wondering, if instead of replacing the whole ranger view upon editing a file, I could open them up in a newly split tmux pane. Here’s a quick snippet to configure splitting a tmux window into panes from within ranger.

Add to the ~/.config/ranger/rc.conf:

map eh eval if 'TMUX' in os.environ: fm.execute_console("shell tmux splitw -h 'vim " + fm.thisfile.basename + "'")
map ev eval if 'TMUX' in os.environ: fm.execute_console("shell tmux splitw -v 'vim " + fm.thisfile.basename + "'")
map es eval if 'TMUX' in os.environ: fm.execute_console("shell tmux splitw -v -c $PWD")
map eS eval if 'TMUX' in os.environ: fm.execute_console("shell tmux splitw -h -c $PWD")

Now navigating onto a file in ranger (having of course started it inside tmux) and pressing e opens a menu to select between h, v, s, S. These consecutive choices will split the view into panes

• (h)orizontally opening the file in vim
• (v)ertically opening the file in vim
• (s)hell in the working directory splitting pane horizontally
• (S)hell in the working directory splitting pane vertically