Known Issues

Zellij: rename-tab Targets Wrong Tab with Multiple Clients

Affects: zellij action rename-tab when multiple clients are attached to the same session

Symptom: Running zellij action rename-tab "name" renames the other client's focused tab instead of yours.

Cause: This is a confirmed architectural limitation. CLI actions create a temporary "fake client" connection to the server socket. The fake client has no real focused tab, so the server resolves focus from another connected client.

As maintainer imsnif stated:

"The CLI is not aware of multiple clients and can never be (because multiple clients being focused on the terminal is a Zellij concept)."

Related issues:

• zellij#4591 — rename panes/tabs by index
• zellij#4602 — rename specific tab by ID
• zellij#3728 — NewTab + RenameTab renames wrong tab

Workaround: Use the zellij-tab-name plugin, which uses $ZELLIJ_PANE_ID to correctly identify the calling client's tab:

echo '{"pane_id": "'"$ZELLIJ_PANE_ID"'", "name": "my-tab"}' | zellij pipe --name change-tab-name

Pending fix: PR #4594 adds an explicit tab_index parameter to rename-tab.