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I know there are options to start a new terminal with a specified title, and that is is possible to change the title from a terminal using the menu: 'Terminal' -> Set Title.

However, I want to change it for a current terminal from command line. How can I change the title for an existing Gnome terminal from command line?

4 Answers 4

14

Output a suitable xterm escape sequence.

echo -ne '\033]0;New title\007'

See also How to change the title of an xterm.

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  • Perfect, thats it! :D Also, thanks for the very interesting link.
    – Sander
    Mar 13, 2012 at 15:26
  • Nice, but is it cross-platform compatible?
    – l0b0
    Mar 20, 2012 at 15:00
  • 1
    @tripleee: Usually it's recommended to use tput commands to print such escape sequences, as mentioned in this exact duplicate.
    – l0b0
    Mar 21, 2012 at 8:27
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    @triplee Thanks for the input! However I don't consider this question as an exact duplicate of the one you mentioned. The context of the other question is very different.
    – Sander
    Feb 13, 2013 at 10:02
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    This no longer seems to work
    – kapad
    Jul 29, 2013 at 14:19
1

If you need to set it to the hostname where you are logged into you can use:

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

It might be worth your while to try KDE. It has tabbed terminal windows, and each tab can be named just by right clicking on the tab.

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  • Thanks for your suggestion, however, I'm still fond with Gnome :)
    – Sander
    Mar 12, 2012 at 22:10
0

If you're using Ubuntu 16.04 you may need to clear the PS1 and PROMPT_COMMAND like:

PS1=$
PROMPT_COMMAND=
echo -en "\033]0;New title\a"

I put together a write up on it at link.

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