[Bug] Focus event escape sequences leak as literal text in tmux with Option+N keybindings

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Nov 24, 2025 by fadedlamp42 Closed Nov 27, 2025

Bug Description
Title: Focus event escape sequences leak as literal text when using Option+N to switch tmux windows

Description:

When using Option+[1-9] keybindings to switch between tmux windows, the focus event escape sequences [I and [O occasionally appear as literal text input in the terminal.

Root cause:

The tmux-sensible plugin enables focus-events on by default. When switching windows via Option+N, the terminal sends focus lost (\e[O) and focus gained (\e[I) sequences.
Due to timing, these sequences sometimes arrive while the shell is in a state where they're interpreted as literal input rather than control sequences.

Reproduction:

  1. Use tmux with focus-events on (default in tmux-sensible)
  2. Bind M-[1-9] to select-window -t N
  3. Rapidly switch between windows using Option+number
  4. Observe [I or [O appearing at the prompt or in editor buffers

Suggested improvement:

Claude Code could detect when users have focus-events enabled in their tmux config and proactively warn about this interaction, or suggest adding readline bindings to
neutralize the sequences:

\# ~/.inputrc
"\e[I": ""
"\e[O": ""

Alternatively, documentation could note this as a known quirk when using meta-key window switching with focus-events enabled.

Environment Info

  • Platform: darwin
  • Terminal: tmux
  • Version: 2.0.50
  • Feedback ID: 83fb8f9b-a533-42ce-9a8a-f8cb08efa477

Errors

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