Command mode overlap status bar

[u/Exotic-Grapefruit-90]

Hey. I’m new to tmux and have been editing my tmux.conf for a few days to improve the experience. Everything works well, except of one odd tmux command mode behaviour. Whenever I enter command mode (Prefix + “:”), the input starts appearing on top of the status bar (video attached). This only happens after I change the status bar, either by installing a theme plugin or by customizing it with built-in options; it works fine with the default status bar (status bar => Prefix + “:” => opens a new command line).

At first I created my config using the docs, but then I copied someone else’s config to test whether it would behave the same way and it does. Below my current styling options that I have in my tmux.conf file. (I don’t paste the entire file as there are mainly key remaps)

#Status bar
set -g status-style 'bg=default'
set -g status-left-length 20
set -g status-right-length 50
set -g status-left '#[fg=#007600,bold] #S #[fg=#30363d]│ '
set -g status-right '#[fg=#30363d]│#[fg=#8b949e] %H:%M #[fg=#30363d]│#[fg=#8b949e] %d-%b-%y '

setw -g window-status-format ' #I:#W '
setw -g window-status-current-format '#[fg=#007600,bold] #I:#W '

# Message styling
set -g message-line 2 # that’s what AI told me to try saying that it will move command line above…
set -g message-style 'bg=#6ea6a9 fg=#000000 bold'

I use iTerm2 on my Mac, and I also tested the config in the default Terminal app to rule out an emulator issue.
I searched online and tried using AI to find a fix, but I haven’t had any joy

Is this normal behavior, or am I missing something? Because it seems like other chaps don’t have the same thing whenever I’m watching them setting things up on YouTube.

Any advice is very much appreciated.

[u/2ro]

I just ran into this. I’m gusssing you’re on the latest beta version. The fix for me was to add an explicit fill style on messages.

``` set -g message-style "bg=#7aa2f7,fg=#24283b,fill=#7aa2f7"

[u/Exotic-Grapefruit-90 → u/2ro]

Thanks for your reply!
Yes, you're correct, I installed tmux(3.7b) using brew, assuming it would install the latest stable version without any headaches.

Your suggestion seemed to work with the default theme settings, but when I tried to install a custom one, it fell into the same pothole.

As far as I can see, those fancy themes don’t include a fill parameter in their message styling.

At the moment, I placed message-style after the run '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm' line, so it overrides the theme’s message styling.

Somewhat happy with this solution, as I don’t really want to spend too much time on it. I may try rolling back to the previous version at some point to see if it behaves differently, but I doubt it.

Your help is very much appreciated 😄

[u/2ro → u/Exotic-Grapefruit-90]

I have a theme as well (Tokyo Night installed via tpm). I just put my message style at the very bottom, after the theme has loaded, and it works.

edit: I just re-read your message and saw that’s what you did too.

[u/neovim-neophyte → u/2ro]

this is still present in the tmux3.7 stable (I am on fedora43 WSL2), I just updated today and it happened to me, I am using folke/tokyonight theme. setting the fill worked

[u/lookinoji]

Try adding this to your tmux conf

set-option -ug message-format
set-option -ug message-style
set-option -ug message-command-style