Zellij is a terminal workspace and multiplexer written in Rust that gives developers, operations engineers, and anyone who loves the terminal built-in layouts, tabs, panes, and a WebAssembly plugin system, built so that simplicity and power do not have to be traded against each other.

What it is

Zellij is a terminal multiplexer and workspace written in Rust and released under the MIT licence, with 35,443 stars and 1,452 forks on GitHub. It lives in the terminal-multiplexer ecosystem, the class of programs the README notes are sometimes called "Terminal Multiplexers", and it is designed around the position that one must not sacrifice simplicity for power. It ships a strong out-of-the-box experience while still offering deep customizability, layouts for personal automation, true multiplayer collaboration, floating and stacked panes, a plugin system for plugins written in any language that compiles to WebAssembly, and a built-in web-client. It is aimed at developers, ops-oriented people, and beginner and power users alike.

The problem it solves is the manual arrangement of terminal work. Rather than placing panes by hand and rebuilding a working environment from scratch, users define layouts and reuse them; rather than treating the terminal as a single-user surface, it supports true multiplayer collaboration; and rather than requiring a terminal at all, its web-client makes one optional. That combination targets the everyday friction of running several long-lived tasks side by side and of sharing that work with other people.

Key capabilities

• Layouts for personal automation, documented at zellij.dev/documentation/layouts.html, defining panes, tabs, and their arrangement for reuse.
• Floating and stacked panes, presented as unique UX features beyond ordinary tiling.
• A plugin system in which plugins can be written in any language that compiles to WebAssembly.
• A built-in web-client, documented at zellij.dev/tutorials/web-client/, which makes a terminal optional.
• True multiplayer collaboration, letting more than one person share the workspace.
• Installation through an OS package, a prebuilt binary from the latest release placed in $PATH, or cargo install --locked zellij.
• A try-before-installing path for bash and zsh users.

Who uses it and how

• Developers and ops-oriented people, the two audiences the README names first, running several panes and tabs inside one workspace.
• Beginners who want a working setup out of the box, and power users who want deep customizability and personal automation through layouts.
• Teams that need true multiplayer collaboration in a shared terminal session.
• Users without a convenient terminal, who reach Zellij through the built-in web-client.
• Plugin authors working in any language that compiles to WebAssembly, extending the workspace itself.

Getting started

Install through a package for your OS (see docs/THIRD_PARTY_INSTALL.md), download a prebuilt binary from the latest release and place it in $PATH, or compile with cargo install --locked zellij. Bash and zsh users can also try Zellij without installing.

How it compares

The facts provided name no competing products, no paid products that Zellij replaces, and no similar tools by name. On the record available here, Zellij stands alone in this registry.

When to use it — and when not to

The project carries 1,915 open issues, so prospective users should expect a busy tracker rather than a small, quiet codebase. Anyone who wants a minimal single-purpose tool may find a full workspace with plugins, layouts, and a web-client to be more surface than they need, and the README excerpt is thin on operational detail such as resource use and release cadence. The licence itself is clear at MIT, and the last push date of 14 September 2026 indicates recent activity.

 
 

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cargo install --locked zellij

bash <(curl -L https://zellij.dev/launch)

bash -c 'bash <(curl -L https://zellij.dev/launch)'