237

I have several instances of terminals running in my working environment, what I would like is to set a specific title for each one, in order to have a clear idea what purpose the specific terminal serves i.e. Apache, editing_ini, postgres etc...

Of course from the command line.

zahypeti
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topless
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17 Answers17

204

Alternatives:

  • There are other ways however, you can also issue

    gnome-terminal --title="SOME TITLE HERE"

    This might not give the desired effect since there is a big chance that your .bashrc overwrites that behaviour.

  • Bringing us to the last method, which I shamelessly ripped out of my .bashrc.

    PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;SOME TITLE HERE\007"'

As an extra reference, this is the particular line in my .bashrc

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"'

You may also need to comment this code out in your ~/.bashrc

case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
    # JEFFYEE REMOVED because it makes commands to title() not work
    #PS1="\[\e]0;${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h: \w\a\]$PS1"
    ;;
*)
    ;;
esac
Pablo Bianchi
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Ward Muylaert
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104

Ward's answer is great if you want to set your title based on what host you're on etc every time you open a terminal. If you just want to quickly set a title though, you can just run echo by itself:

echo -ne "\033]0;SOME TITLE HERE\007"

or make a simple function (inside your ~/.bashrc), say termtitle

termtitle() { printf "\033]0;$*\007"; }

which you can run with termtitle some title here.

Kevin Bowen
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naught101
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39

Argh, so many answers...

I tried wmctrl, which almost worked, except I couldn't get it to change the icon title, at least not permanently.

The problem is that the PS1 in Bash in Ubuntu sets the title.

The default PS1 is

\[\e]0;\u@\h: \w\a\]${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$

... which sets the title in the first escape sequence: \e]0;\u@\h: \w\a

Thus, there are two solutions:

Solution 1: simplify PS1, then use PROMPT_COMMAND

Change PS1 to something simpler:

PS1="\u@\h:\w\$ "

Then use the PROMPT_COMMAND:

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;SOME TITLE HERE\007"'

Solution 2: directly modify PS1

Simply modify PS1 with new title:

PS1='\[\e]0;newtitle\a\]${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ '

Notes on escape codes

Note that (borrowing from wjandrea's comment below this answer):

  • \e or \033 is the escape (ESC) character, which starts an escape sequence.
  • ] starts an operating system command (OSC).
  • For an xterm, 0; means "set the title", and
  • \a or \007 is the bell (BEL) character that terminates the OSC.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#Escape_sequences

Hugh Perkins
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37

If you use the Vim editor, you can also enable this option in your vimrc:

:set title

which is disabled by default. It will set cool terminal titles showing the filename which you are editing at the moment and some other things.

ulidtko
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32

Works on Ubuntu 16.04 to 24.04

This answer is simpler than most others. To use it, you would just type:

title "My new title"

  • Easier to remember than most other answers.
  • The accepted answer and others do not work on modern versions of Ubuntu (from 16.04 on up).
  • This answer doesn't require 3rd party packages like wmctrl and xdotool.
  • Version 2 allows running multiple times in the same session.

One-time function creation

Create the title function in your ~/.bashrc file:

function title() {
    # Set terminal tab title. Usage: title "new tab name"
    prefix=${PS1%%\\a*}                  # Everything before: \a
    search=${prefix##*;}                 # Eeverything after: ;
    esearch="${search//\\/\\\\}"         # Change \ to \\ in old title
    PS1="${PS1/$esearch/$@}"             # Search and replace old with new
}

Save the ~/.bashrc file. After opening a new terminal tab use:

title "Special Projects"

or:

title Special\ Projects

A phrase with spaces must be wrapped in double quotes (") or each space must be escaped with \.

WinEunuuchs2Unix
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31

For the sake of completeness, I would add that you can also set the gnome-terminal title using this command: 

wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -N "MyWindowTitle"

You'll need to install the package wmctrl Install wmctrl first.

naught101
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Isaiah
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9

If you are a Ubuntu user, you can change the title of a gnome-terminal tab using the HUD.

While in the gnome-terminal, hit Alt to bring up the HUD, type the first few letters, e.g. "tit", hit enter and type in your new title.

This is a very quick method and avoids using the mouse.

(UPDATE: In newer versions of gnome-terminal, this was removed. Try other answers.)

TheTechRobo
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Tom
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3

Another way of changing the title of gnome-terminal is by using gconftool-2; this changes the initial terminal title for the profile selected, so you could have different profiles associated with titles such as 'Apache', 'Editing', etc. You would then launch gnome-terminal with the appropriate profile to get the terminal title you had specified. This is in contrast to gnome-terminal --title "name" which changes the title per terminal, but doesn't affect the initial title specified in the profile.

You could use the following command in a script to set the name of the terminal for a profile, and you could have the name of the terminal change at certain times in the day to remind you of things:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/title --type=string "Apache"

This is for the default profile, but you could set the title for other profiles as well by changing, for example, Default to another profile like Profile0:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Profile0/title --type=string "Editing"

I thought this way of changing the title is of use because of the way it could be used in scripting, or just as a quick command-line way to set the title for the profile. Note that sometimes you have to relaunch the terminal with the specified profile for the gconftool-2 setting to take affect. The complete settings available for gnome-terminal can be listed with gconftool-2 -R /apps/gnome-terminal.

3

To display only the current working directory in the title, try this in your '.bashrc' :

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0; ${PWD##*/}\007"'

or

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;$(basename ${PWD})\007"'
Sri
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3

Another solution is to use xdotool to simulate keystrokes, maybe useful in scripts:

  1. Set a keyboard shortcut in gnome-terminal:

    Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts... > Terminal > Set Title

    For example assing the Shift+Ctrl+Y.

  2. Install xdotool if you don't have it already:

    sudo apt-get install xdotool

  3. The following sequence of commands (that you can use also in a bash script) will set the terminal/tab title (escape the spaces with \):

    xdotool key ctrl+shift+y 
xdotool type My\ new\ fabulous\ title
xdotool key Return

  4. [optional] You can also use xdotool to e.g. open a new tab and set the title with the above commands, using:

    xdotool key ctrl+shift+t

    Consider adding a sleep time before and after opening a new tab, e.g. sleep 1 (to wait for 1 second).

This is not the most elegant solution, but it worked for me! The previous answers did not work in my case. I use gnome-terminal in Ubuntu 14.04 and I wanted to make a bash script.

MakisH
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2

As an addition to other valid answers, xdotool has the functionality that allows you to change the title of any application and window.

xdotool getactivewindow set_window --name "WINDOW NAME HERE"

Note that the change won't be permanent, it'll change when you change directory and probably be set to your PWD.

To permanently change it, you can modify PS1 variable within ~/.bashrc as mentioned.

PS1="${PS1}\[\e]0;New Title\a\]"

This modification is permanent. In fact after this, the changes you make with xdotool will also be permanent and won't change with cd.

Haggra
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2

easy Ubuntu 20.04 way (*from https://askubuntu.com/a/1366329/149527)

PS1=$PS1"[\e]0;New_Terminal_Name\a]"

IvanM
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2

This worked in my Gnome Terminal 3.18.3.

Edit your .bashrc file and add this function

# Update gnome terminal title
function termtitle() {
    # take argument
    TITLE=$1
    shift
    # update title
    PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0; $TITLE \007"'
}

Don't forget to source your .bashrc file

$ source ~/.bashrc

And then you can simply update you'll be able to change terminal title like this:

$ termtitle "MariaDB CLI"
alexandre-rousseau
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1

If you are using gnome 3, the convenient Terminal > Set Title menu option has been removed. You can install a gnome 2 forked terminal which still has that "Set Title" menu option, and run that instead:

sudo apt-get install mate-terminal

Instead of running "Terminal", run "MATE Terminal". You should probably also select mate-terminal in sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator.

JDiMatteo
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1

for a wsl (windows subsystem for linux) terminal tab i'll do this:

# function to set terminal title
function set-title(){
  if [[ -z "$ORIG" ]]; then
    ORIG="$PS1"
  fi
  TITLE="\[\e]2;$*\a\]"
  PS1="${ORIG}${TITLE}"
}
TechDogLover OR kiaNasirzadeh
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1

In case any poor souls like myself are forced to use tcsh, try something like this in your .cshrc:

set prompt='%{\033]0;%n@%m\007%}%~%# '

Source and more details: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Xterm-Title-4.html

spookypeanut
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0

In your ~/.vimrc file along with the

set title

command

add the line

set titleold=

The old window title will reappear when you exit vim. It was already thought of!

Also, people who have been using vi since the 80's may find that using an arrow key does not bump you into command mode. Add this to ~/.vimrc if you want 80's terminal behavior

" vi users may expect that if you are 
" in INSERT mode if an arrow key is pressed it will hop back 
" into command mode. 
"
inoremap <left> <esc><left>
inoremap <right> <esc><right>
inoremap <up> <esc><up>
inoremap <down> <esc><down>
Robin
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