Setting Title for Tabs in Terminator (Console Application) in Ubuntu

Question

Is there way to set terminator (Version: 0.95ppa1) title of tabs to a different string via bash command-line (CLI)?

I plan to use this feature with AutoKey and I can open multiple machines at same time and set title to Name of the machine its connected to.

Preparedness

Thanks Paul. Let me try there. I found other useful utility mrxvt.. its seems to be very powerful.. Looks like, I'm going to migrate to mrxvt instead of terminator for this purpose. – Preparedness

Even I want this feature. Any luck finding solution for this ? – Coefficient

Answer 1

ORIG=$PS1
TITLE="\e]2;\"This is just crazy enough to work\"\a"
PS1=${ORIG}${TITLE}

Resets title to

"This is just crazy enough to work"

This should apply to all xterm-style terminal emulators.

Biblioclast

excellent! Just visited this today :D Terminator on ubuntu works. – Brittle

How comes it works if I paste this directly in a terminal, but not not in a bash script ? – Armada

Do not use this method to setup your terminal's title since they will mess up your commands if you have typed long commands. Tested on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS x64 with terminator 0.98 – Filicide

For the lazy (condensed to 1 line): ORIG=$PS1; TITLE="\e]2;\"This is just crazy enough to work\"\a"; PS1=${ORIG}${TITLE}. Replace This is just crazy enough to work with your desired tab title. – Etoile

Answer 2

From the Terminator man pages,

Ctrl+Alt+W Rename window title.

Ctrl+Alt+A Rename tab title.

Ctrl+Alt+X Rename terminal title.

You can also launch a new instance with

$ terminator --title [title]

Lifeline

How to run this from the shell on tab already opened! That would be great. – Peer

Answer 3

Add follwing in your .bashrc file by editing it using vim ~/.bashrc and use set_title to rename your tab:

set_title() 
{
ORIG=$PS1
TITLE="\e]2;$*\a"
PS1=${ORIG}${TITLE}
}

run source ~/.bashrc command after editing your .bashrc file

Ex.: set_title newtab will rename your current tab to newtab

working Properly in Gnome3.14 terminal and terminator 0.97

Roney

This approach is only useful is you will use the terminal locally. If you need to SSH the correct approach was indicated at https://mcmap.net/q/378334/-setting-title-for-tabs-in-terminator-console-application-in-ubuntu. – Floreneflorentia

Answer 4

On Terminator 1.91-6 double click terminal title enables edition

Pluri

Answer 5

PS1 does not need to be set. Credit for this function goes to geirha on freenode #bash

set_title() { printf '\e]2;%s\a' "$*"; }

Trista

This works for me: printf "\e]2;This is the new title\a"; I think the quotes need to be double. – Intermarry

This doesn't work for me in Ubuntu 14.04 with Terminal and also optionally installed Terminator. Quotes are fine. – Shift

Could you provide some reference that PS1 does not need to be set as you wrote in your answer? I ask because if I do this via PS1 as described in https://mcmap.net/q/378334/-setting-title-for-tabs-in-terminator-console-application-in-ubuntu it works. If I don't (like in your answer) it does not work. I would like to learn more about this PS1 not being necessary for the title. – Shift

@hakre, I posted this in 2012, really, anything could have changed in 3 years. – Trista

Answer 6

This seems to work for me. I'm using BASH on Crunchbang (Debian derived)

$ echo -en '\e]0;echo works too\a'

Samuella

Answer 7

With Terminator 0.96 and GNU bash 4.2.25 the printf suggestion above worked for me, but I had to tweak it slightly to make it into a function that would just work for me in a new Terminator tab. I added this to the end of my ~/.bashrc file:

set_title() { printf "\e]2;$*\a"; }

The key was placing the \a at the end of the quoted string. Then when opening a new tab in Terminator I can use this like so:

set_title "My new tab title"

Apologies to those who already stated the essentials of this answer, but since I found that I had to make slight changes to get it to work for me, this my also benefit someone else.

Aristippus

FYI printf will correctly insert the first following argument in place of the '%s'. Tom Dignan solution's worked fine here on bash 4.3.8 and terminator 0.97. But yours will have known issues ('invalid character format', or missing characters in the title) if you happen to use character % in your title. – Reprehensible

Does not work on Ubuntu 14.04 (GNOME Terminal 3.10.2,terminator 0.97). – Shift

Answer 8

Try add PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -en "\033]0; $("pwd") \a"' in your .bashrc

Clinandrium

Answer 9

For terminator 0.98 (Ubuntu 16.04 MATE), right clicking the title enables renaming it.

Bolshevist

For me, right click isn't working but double click works – Cheroot

Answer 10

Right click on terminator and choose preferences from the drop-down menu. Choose profiles tab and enable "show title bar" option. It works!!

Tip: You can actually rename each terminator window!!

Olivarez