Troubleshooting

Preview docs describe unreleased preview builds. Stable docs remain at /docs/.

Start with the versions and session status:

herdr -V
herdr status

Also record your operating system, outer terminal name and version, whether the session is local or remote, and whether tmux is involved.

Enter, Tab, or Backspace fires twice

Older terminal versions can emit the release of Enter, Tab, and Backspace as the same bytes as the press when an application enables Kitty keyboard event reporting. Herdr cannot distinguish those duplicate bytes after the terminal sends them.

Update the outer terminal to a version containing its upstream fix:

Terminal	Minimum fixed version
kitty	0.33.0
foot	1.20.0
Alacritty	0.15.0

This is especially common with older terminal packages from long-term-support Linux distributions. See Herdr issue #1116 for the confirmed boundary captures and upstream references. If the problem remains on a current terminal version, report the exact terminal version and whether it also happens outside Herdr.

Option+Left or Option+Right inserts ;3D or ;3C

Terminals commonly send Alt+Left and Alt+Right as the standard modified-arrow sequences ESC[1;3D and ESC[1;3C. On macOS, the outer terminal must first be configured to treat Option as Alt. If the shell does not bind these sequences, zsh may display their remaining characters as ;3D or ;3C. This can happen with kitty, Alacritty, and other terminals; Herdr and tmux both preserve the original modified-arrow input.

Add explicit zsh bindings if you want modified arrows to perform word navigation in every terminal and nested shell:

bindkey $'\e[1;3D' backward-word
bindkey $'\e[1;3C' forward-word

Kitty can appear to work differently outside Herdr because its automatic zsh integration adds these bindings only to shells started directly by kitty, not shells created by terminal multiplexers. Follow kitty’s manual shell integration instructions, or map the keys in kitty.conf before they reach the shell:

map alt+left send_text all \x1bb
map alt+right send_text all \x1bf

Herdr deliberately does not rewrite modified arrows because terminal applications may use Alt+Left and Alt+Right directly. See Herdr issue #1370 for the investigation.

Herdr updated, but the running session is still old

Updating the binary does not always replace a compatible server that is already running. Check herdr status. To start the updated server, stop the session and launch Herdr again:

herdr server stop
herdr

Stopping a server exits its pane processes. Named sessions use herdr session stop <name>. See Install Herdr for updater, package-manager, and live-handoff behavior.

The herdr command is not found

Restart the terminal so it reloads its environment, then confirm the Herdr install directory is on PATH. Package-manager installs must be updated and exposed through that package manager. See Install Herdr.

A direct keybinding does nothing

The operating system or outer terminal may consume the chord before Herdr receives it. Free the chord in that layer or choose another binding. See Keyboard for known conflicts and safe defaults.

Remote attach cannot authenticate

First confirm that normal OpenSSH works with ssh <host>. For a passphrase-protected key in a non-interactive shell, CI job, or mobile terminal, load the key into ssh-agent before starting remote attach. See Persistence and remote access.

Find diagnostic logs

Herdr logs live in ~/.config/herdr/ by default:

herdr.log
herdr-client.log
herdr-server.log

Set HERDR_LOG=herdr=debug for more detail. Include the current log and rotated siblings when reporting a problem. See Configuration.