Window Title in Bash

Question

How can i set the window title in Bash? I do know that in win-batch it is TITLE, but what's it in bash??

Answer 1

Here is a nice function to do it:

# Allow the user to set the title.
function title {
   PROMPT_COMMAND="echo -ne \"\033]0;$1 (on $HOSTNAME)\007\""
}

Put that in your ~/.bashrc, then type "title whatever" to set the title. If you want to get rid of the hostname, remove "(on $HOSTNAME)".

Edit: make sure to . ~/.bashrc (aka source ~/.bashrc) before trying, of course.

Source link.

Answer 2

We need more information: The answer will depend on what terminal you're using, not what shell. Is this in an xterm? An rxvt? A cygwin window on windows? Etc.

(danben's answer works for xterms, and probably for rxvt terminals)

Answer 3

I have this VT100 escape sequence defined in .bashrc.

PS1_SET_TITLE='\[\e]0;\u@\h:\w\a\]'

PS1="${PS1_SET_TITLE}" my other prompt components

export PS1

For my home directory it displays alex@host:~, when I change directories, they are updated in window title.

Works with CYGWIN and PuTTY terminal sessions. I usually don't run X, but when I did it worked fine with XTerm.

Read PROMPTING section of bash man page on available switches for PS commands, e.g \u \h \w.

Answer 4

If you are using "mintty" (the default terminal of Cygwin since end 2011), add the following in .bashrc :

function title {
   export WINDOWTITLE=$1
}    
export PS1='\[\e]0;$WINDOWTITLE:\w\a\]\n\[\e[32m\]\u@\h \[\e[33m\]~\w\[\e[0m\]\n\$'

and reopen your terminal