How to change Gnome-Terminal title?

Question

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.

Answer 1

• The most userfriendly way is picking it from the menu Terminal -> "Set Title...".

• 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

Answer 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"

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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 first.

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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"' 

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

Argh, so many answers...

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

The solution is that PS1 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.

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\$ '

Answer 9

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.

Answer 10

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 bash script, say termtitle

#!/bin/bash

echo -ne "\033]0;${1}\007"

which you can run with termtitle "some title here"

Answer 11

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.