Getting started

Requirements

Windows 10 or 11, x64. Nothing else — the release is self-contained.

Cascadia Mono

Terminals use Cascadia Mono when it is present and fall back to Consolas otherwise. It ships with Windows Terminal and Visual Studio; installing it gives you the intended look.

Install

1. Download the latest WinMux-<version>-win-x64-setup.exe from the releases page.

2. Optionally, check it against checksums.txt, published with every release:

   (Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 .\WinMux-0.7.9-win-x64-setup.exe).Hash.ToLower()

3. Run it. It installs for your Windows account only, into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\WinMux, and asks for no administrator rights.

WinMux needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime; setup offers the download page if it is missing. After that, WinMux keeps itself current — see Updates. It is listed in Settings → Apps → Installed apps, and uninstalling it there removes the program folder but keeps your sessions and settings in %APPDATA%\WinMux.

Prefer a folder you control?

Every release also carries WinMux-<version>-win-x64.zip. Unzip it anywhere you can write to and run WinMux.exe — the same program, and it updates itself the same way. Not under Program Files: WinMux replaces its own files when it updates, and it cannot do that there.

Building it yourself

git clone https://github.com/rennerdo30/winmux
cd winmux
.\scripts\run.ps1

run.ps1 builds the solution and launches it. .\scripts\publish.ps1 produces the same versioned zip the releases carry.

Your first layout

1. Split the window. Split right and Split down on the toolbar, or Ctrl+B then % and ".

2. Put something in a pane. New opens a terminal. Its dropdown lists every profile you have, including installed applications found through the Start Menu.

3. Make a tab group. Tab group turns the focused pane into a stack of tabs. Tab groups nest, so a tab can contain a split that contains more tabs, and each group’s strip can sit on any edge.

4. Save it. The session saves itself continuously; the disk icon forces it now, and its dropdown has Save as… if you want several named layouts.

Open it again tomorrow and the panes come back, in the same shape, in the same directories.

Where things live

Session	session.toml in %APPDATA%\WinMux, or whatever you opened
Settings	settings.toml in your user profile
Profiles	profiles.toml, beside the settings
Application quirks	foreign-app-quirks.json beside the executable — editable

Every one of them is text, and the Settings page shows you the exact paths.