How to set terminal title in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

In older Ubuntu versions, you could have just right-clicked on the Ubuntu Terminal window's title bar and set any title you would like. But unfortunately after Ubuntu 18.04 LTS this feature is gone. I used to love this feature because I'm multiple tabs in the single terminal window kind of a guy.

I usually like to work in multiple named terminal tabs like below.

By default, in newer Ubuntu version, it is showing just the current directory.


Let's see how we can do this.

Ubuntu prompt

In ubuntu's Bash, there's an environment variable $PS1 which is responsible for the details that the command line prompts.

You'll be able to echo this and see what's inside it.

If I echo it it will print something like this.

echo $PS1

\[\e]0;\u@\h: \w\a\]${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$

If you really want to understand what this means, you can refer this page. 

Updating the terminal title

In order to update the terminal title, we'll have to provide a special char sequence with the title.

Let's say I want to update my current terminal as "test1"

Then I have to set the PS1 variable with the below char sequence.

PS1=$PS1"\[\e]0;test1\a\]"

Now, I've updated the title. Let's try to decipher the above char sequence.

According to the above-mentioned documentation;

\[  begin a sequence of non-printing characters

And it turns out to be 

\e]0; is the char sequence for setting the terminal title. Bash identifies this sequence and set the tile with the following characters. Number 0 turns out to be the value to reference the title property.

test1 is the tile we gave

\a is the ASCII bell character, also in this case, it marks the end of the tile to read from Bash.

\]  end a sequence of non-printing characters


Now, we might have done our job, but I don't want to remember all these characters. Instead, I'd like to use a simple function or a command to set my terminal title.


Let's write a simple function when I can use it to change my title.

function stitle(){
 if [ -z "$PS1_BACK" ];  # set backup if it is empty
 then
  PS1_BACK="$PS1"
 fi

 TITLE="\[\e]0;$*\a\]"
 PS1="${PS1_BACK}${TITLE}"
}

Here, I've backed up the previous value of the PS1 variable into $PS1_BACK just in case, I don't want to lose any of the existing values or functionality.

Then I'm setting a new variable called TITLE with my above-mentioned magic character sequence.

Here, you will find the $* variable instead of the actual text I want to use. It means all possible parameters in Bash. In our case, it would be any argument that I'm going to provide for this function.

To use this frequently you can append this to your ~/.bashrc file.

Open the .bashrc file in your home directory with your favorite text editor and append the above function at the end of it. Save it and close it out.


To use it immediately you can source it to the current terminal.

source ~/.bashrc


Then we are good to go!

stitle <the title of your terminal tab>

This function will be automatically available to use in your next reboot without having to source it.