Mac OS X change the terminal window title
Contributed by macster 
Tagged: Apple Mac The title of the Mac OS X terminal window can easily be changed. This can be useful when running a script or when using multiple terminal windows for different purposes to easily identify them when switching between applications and windows.
In the terminal window, from a bash prompt (the default shell) or in a bash shell script, use the following command to change the terminal window title to Tech-Recipes rules:
echo -n -e "\033]0;Tech-Recipes rules\007"
You can place (just about) any text in place of Tech-Recipes rules including the contents of a variable. For example:
name=`hostname`
echo -n -e "\033]0;$name\007"
This will change the title of the terminal to the hostname of the computer running the shell.
You may also like -
How Do I Use Bin and Cue Files in OS X?
OS X: Simple Ways to Find Your Mac's Serial Number
Mac OS X: Clear the DNS cache
Mac OS X recover lost root password
Mac OS X change the default web browser
Mac OS X gain root/superuser access using sudo
OS X: Show hidden files and folders in Mac OS X Finder
Leopard Terminal: TABS!
des09 said on November 8, 2008
How would you set the tab title when running multiple tabs?
luca said on April 27, 2009
Thanks, works like a charm. However, it doesn’t change the title of a tab, just that of the main windows in which many tabs are contained – so it’s useless to be able to see at a glance which terminal is the one you’re looking for.
Anonymous said on November 20, 2009
Perfect, I put this in my .bashrc and the title changes on each tab as I login
echo -n -e “33]0;`hostname`07″
The only problem I have is that it doesn’t change back, when I get logged out, so I have an alias to reset it…
alias sett=”echo -n -e “33]0;`hostname`07″
Anonymous said on November 20, 2009
I put this in my .bashrc
echo -n -e “33]0;`hostname`07
Then on each tab as I log into a different machine (It has to have that line in the .bashrc of the user/machine I’m logging into) it sets the title as I log in to the machine, so all the tabs are correct.
And to recover on logout, I put this in the .bash_logout:
prev=`who am i | sed -e “s/.*((.*))/1/”`
if test ! x$prev = x
then
echo -n -e “33]0;$prev07″
fi
alias sett=”echo -n -e “33]0;`hostname`07″
Anonymous said on January 20, 2010
In bash, you can do this:
PS1=”33]0;H07h:W u$ ”
The PS1 prompt gets printed at every command (see ‘man bash’). Thus, the window title gets set at each display of the prompt — so if you log out of one shell, the prompt from the old shell is displayed and re-sets the window title.
This method also gets you all the bash prompt expansions (see ‘man bash’, search for PROMPTING), like H which expands to the full hostname and h which expands to the hostname up to the first . and so on.
Ivan Tumanov said on February 9, 2011
This works in an interesting way –
export PS1=”$(echo -n -e “33]0;w07″)w $”
executes the echo command to set the tab title to w and then shows a regular w $ prompt.
Julie said on November 7, 2011
Awesome. Perfect. Thanks!
Pedro Furlanetto said on November 13, 2011
I found this one to be the most convenient:
export PS1=”\$(echo -n -e ‘33]0;\W07′)\W \u $ “
moonpixel said on November 30, 2011
nice, using it like this
#!/usr/bin/env bash
echo -n -e “33]0;$107″
exit 0