How do I Attach to the Last Session

[ShiromMakkad]

I'd like to create an alias to attach to the last session used on the current machine. I know you can use zellij a but if there's multiple sessions, it just prints all the sessions. I want it to connect to the top session in the list, but I don't want to type out its name. Is this possible?

[Lockszmith-GH]

What are these other sessions?

As in, what is your workflow, and what is reconnecting to the last session solving?

[Lockszmith-GH]

I basically use a single session by default - I name it $USER@$(hostname), this way my login scripts make sure I'm on the default session automatically. For other sessions, if I created any, I'll use the session picker to change them.

Would that help? (I mean until someone either mentions how to get the latest sessions, or someone implements it)

[ShiromMakkad]

That makes sense. I use multiple sessions frequently enough that I'd prefer this to be built in functionality, but it's only a couple keystrokes in the morning without it. I'm sure I could make a shell script for it if need be.

[Lockszmith-GH]

I've been thinking about this - and you might get away with a function/script wrapping zellij, which writes the session name into /tmp/zellij-$UID-session.name or something similar.

[ShiromMakkad]

Or just run zellij a and use awk to grab the top entry and running zellij a <top_entry>.

EDIT: zellij a shows sessions in a random order. This won't work..

[ShiromMakkad]

Another annoying thing about zellij a is that it shows exited sessions, which means I have to scroll up to even see what sessions are open at that moment :/

[peterjc]

What does your login script look like for this? i.e. How do you handle the session not existing yet:

$ zellij attach "$USER@$(hostname)"
No session with the name 'XXXXXXX@XXXXXXX' found!

e.g. Do you just manually do this once:

$ zellij --session "$USER@$(hostname)"
...

Or is this done with an if-statement via something zellij list-sessions | grep "$USER@$(hostname)" perhaps?

---

I think I have the same use-case: I'm considering using zellij for a couple of different remote servers that I connect too, where the connection can be unstable (typically the VPN times out, or I relocated an connect to a different WiFi). I think I just want one consistent session on each remote machine, to use when ever I log into it.

[Lockszmith-GH]

One consistent session is easy enough.

if [[ -z "$ZELLIJ_SESSION_NAME" ]]; then
    zellij attach -c $USER@$(hostname)
fi

First, test if you're already in zellij on this session, then if not, attach to an existing session named $USER@$(hostname), and because of -c if it doesn't exist, it will create it.

But it's different than 'the last session' OP is asking for, as they are using multiple sessions.