Copy and mouse

By default, selecting text with the mouse copies it (copy_on_select, on by default). Under the hood Zellij copies via OSC 52, a terminal escape sequence that hands text to your clipboard through the terminal itself. That detail matters most over SSH: OSC 52 can copy from a remote machine to your local clipboard, because the sequence travels back through your terminal, no clipboard tooling needed on the remote.

Mouse mode (on by default) lets you click panes to focus, click tabs to switch, and drag borders to resize. But it also means Zellij captures the mouse, which fights your terminal’s own click-to-select and link-clicking. The escape hatch is Shift: hold it and Zellij hands the mouse back to the terminal for native selection, link-opening, and scrolling.