The session manager and resurrection
The session manager is a built-in plugin that gives you a visual switcher: browse active sessions, resurrect dead ones, start new ones, rename the current one, and kill sessions, all from one floating panel. It’s the fastest way to move between sessions once you have more than one.
Resurrection is why a Zellij session feels immortal. About once a second, Zellij serialises each session, its tabs, panes, and the command running in each pane, to a layout file in your cache folder. If the session exits (a clean quit, a crash, a reboot), that layout is kept. zellij ls shows exited sessions as resurrectable, and attaching to one rebuilds it and re-runs the commands.
Try it yourself
Switch with the session manager
Use the visual switcher to move between sessions.
- Make sure you have at least two sessions (start a second: detach, then
zellij --session scratch) - Press
Ctrl othenwto open the session manager - Select another session and switch to it
- Open it again and try renaming the current session from the panel
Resurrect a dead session
Kill a session and bring it back to prove resurrection works.
- In a throwaway session, run a long-lived command in a pane, like
top - Detach, then kill it:
zellij kill-session <name> - Run
zellij lsand find it listed as exited/resurrectable - Run
zellij attach <name>and watch the layout and command come back
zellij ls and reattaching rebuilt its panes and re-ran the command.