How can I make ctrl+left/right keys to move by whole word in tmux?

Solution 1:

Edit your ~/.tmux.conf and add lines:
```
set-window-option -g xterm-keys on
```
If you don’t want to make it permanent just yet, do:
```
C-b :set-window-option xterm-keys on
```
Reload your config in tmux by doing:
```
C-b :source-file ~/.tmux.conf
```

More information here:

set-window-option -g xterm-keys on

Got me some of the way there and gave me Ctrl-Left/Right on the console, but it was still responding differently in vim.

Unbinding the keys didn't seem to help.

It turned out that at some point I had set my default terminal to screen (set-option -g default-terminal "screen" in .tmux.conf)

Changing this to the following gave me Ctrl-Left/Right in everything else:

set-option -g default-terminal "xterm-256color"

Hope that helps somebody.