Read tmux variables (display_message)¶

Use when you need to read a tmux variable no dedicated tool covers — zoom state, pane dead flag, client activity. Despite the historical name (display_message is the tmux verb it wraps), this tool does not display anything to the user; it substitutes the variables and returns the value.

Avoid when a dedicated tool already provides the information — e.g. use snapshot_pane for cursor position and mode, get_pane_info for standard metadata (including the new pane_left / pane_top / pane_at_* geometry block), or find_pane_by_position to resolve a window corner to a PaneInfo without parsing #{pane_at_bottom} / #{pane_at_right} yourself.

Side effects: The built-in request reads data only. A configured alias or hook can add effects; see Trust model.

Accepts literal text and #{variable} references only. Modifiers such as #{E:...} re-expand a variable’s value, which can arrive from a pane rather than from you, so they are refused rather than filtered.

Modifiers, conditionals, and padding are therefore no longer available here. Run tmux display-message -p through run_command for those: raw format syntax belongs on the surface labelled execution, where the caller is the one supplying it.

Example:

{
  "tool": "display_message",
  "arguments": {
    "format_string": "zoomed=#{window_zoomed_flag} dead=#{pane_dead}",
    "pane_id": "%0"
  }
}

Response (string):

zoomed=0 dead=0

Parameters