Ytdyklly

Ward's answer is great if you want to set your title based on what host you're on etc every time you open a terminal. If you just want to quickly set a title though, you can just run echo by itself:

echo -ne "33]0;SOME TITLE HERE07"

or make a simple bash script, say termtitle

#!/bin/bash



echo -ne "33]0;${1}07"

which you can run with termtitle "some title here"

If you use the Vim editor, you can also enable this option in your vimrc:

:set title

which is disabled by default. It will set cool terminal titles showing the filename which you are editing at the moment and some other things.

For the sake of completeness, I would add that you can also set the gnome-terminal title using this command:

wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -N "MyWindowTitle"

You'll need to install the package wmctrl first.

Argh, so many answers...

I tried wmctrl, which almost worked, except I couldn't get it to change the icon title, at least not permanently.

The problem is that the PS1 in Bash in Ubuntu sets the title.

The default PS1 is

[e]0;u@h: wa]${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}u@h:w$ 

... which sets the title in the first escape sequence: e]0;u@h: wa

Thus, there are two solutions:

Solution 1: simplify PS1, then use PROMPT_COMMAND

Change PS1 to something simpler:

PS1="u@h:w$ "

Then use the PROMPT_COMMAND:

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "33]0;SOME TITLE HERE07"'

Solution 2: directly modify PS1

Simply modify PS1 with new title:

PS1='[e]0;newtitlea]${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}u@h:w$ '

If you are a Ubuntu user, you can change the title of a gnome-terminal tab using the HUD.

While in the gnome-terminal, hit Alt to bring up the HUD, type the first few letters, e.g. "tit", hit enter and type in your new title.

This is a very quick method and avoids using the mouse.

Another way of changing the title of gnome-terminal is by using gconftool-2; this changes the initial terminal title for the profile selected, so you could have different profiles associated with titles such as 'Apache', 'Editing', etc. You would then launch gnome-terminal with the appropriate profile to get the terminal title you had specified. This is in contrast to gnome-terminal --title "name" which changes the title per terminal, but doesn't affect the initial title specified in the profile.

You could use the following command in a script to set the name of the terminal for a profile, and you could have the name of the terminal change at certain times in the day to remind you of things:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/title --type=string "Apache"

This is for the default profile, but you could set the title for other profiles as well by changing, for example, Default to another profile like Profile0:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Profile0/title --type=string "Editing"

I thought this way of changing the title is of use because of the way it could be used in scripting, or just as a quick command-line way to set the title for the profile. Note that sometimes you have to relaunch the terminal with the specified profile for the gconftool-2 setting to take affect. The complete settings available for gnome-terminal can be listed with gconftool-2 -R /apps/gnome-terminal.

Another solution is to use xdotool to simulate keystrokes, maybe useful in scripts:

1. 
   

   Set a keyboard shortcut in gnome-terminal:

   
   
   

   Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts... > Terminal > Set Title
   
   

   
   
   

   For example assing the Shift+Ctrl+Y.

   
   


2. 
   

   Install xdotool if you don't have it already:

   
   
   

   sudo apt-get install xdotool
   
   

   
   


3. 
   

   The following sequence of commands (that you can use also in a bash script) will set the terminal/tab title (escape the spaces with ):

   
   
   

   xdotool key ctrl+shift+y 
   
   xdotool type My new fabulous title
   
   xdotool key Return
   
   

   
   


4. 
   

   [optional] You can also use xdotool to e.g. open a new tab and set the title with the above commands, using:

   
   
   

   xdotool key ctrl+shift+t
   
   

   
   
   

   Consider adding a sleep time before and after opening a new tab, e.g. sleep 1 (to wait for 1 second).

   
   

This is not the most elegant solution, but it worked for me! The previous answers did not work in my case. I use gnome-terminal in Ubuntu 14.04 and I wanted to make a bash script.

To display only the current working directory in the title, try this in your '.bashrc' :

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "33]0; ${PWD##*/}07"'

or

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "33]0;$(basename ${PWD})07"' 

This worked in my Gnome Terminal 3.18.3.

Edit your .bashrc file and add this function

# Update gnome terminal title

function termtitle() {

    # take argument

    TITLE=$1

    shift

    # update title

    PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "33]0; $TITLE 07"'

}

Don't forget to source your .bashrc file

$ source ~/.bashrc

And then you can simply update you'll be able to change terminal title like this:

$ termtitle "MariaDB CLI"

In case any poor souls like myself are forced to use tcsh, try something like this in your .cshrc:

set prompt='%{33]0;%n@%m07%}%~%# '

Source and more details: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Xterm-Title-4.html

If you are using gnome 3, the convenient Terminal > Set Title menu option has been removed. You can install a gnome 2 forked terminal which still has that "Set Title" menu option, and run that instead:

sudo apt-get install mate-terminal

Instead of running "Terminal", run "MATE Terminal". You should probably also select mate-terminal in sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator.