Setting the PuTTY window title from command line

I sometimes want to set the title of my PuTTY windows, like "Editor", "Compiler", etc. to identify distinct windows. I found the following script very useful. You can add that to your ~/.bash_profile. Once you login, you can set the title to whatever you want:


function wtitle {
if [ "$TERM" == "xterm" ] ; then
# Remove the old title string in the PS1, if one is already set.
PS1=`echo $PS1 | sed -r 's/^\\\\\[.+\\\\\]//g'`
export PS1="\[\033]0;$1 - \u@\h:\w\007\]$PS1"
else
echo "You are not working in xterm. I cannot set the title."
fi
}

The above function will make the window title to be whatever argument you give followed by the usual user@host:workingdirectory. I think this should work with any xterm client. Not just PuTTY. (I haven't tested with any other xterm client.)

For e.g. to set the window title to be Editor, you would give the following command:
wtitle Editor
Update on Jul 15, 2013: I wrote a simpler version of this function which can be found here. 

Comments

josy1024 said…
i stumbled upon your site (putty's window title change script).
pretty cool! - works perfekt!

regards from austria,
josy
7/17/2008 04:37:00 AM
Roy said…
Glad it helped you. Thanks for dropping a word.
8/26/2008 12:23:00 AM
Anonymous said…
Hi,

thanks for the Code.
But since sed -r isn't a valid option on Solaris i just changed the code a bit an specified the PS1 Variable to my standard config before i added the text:

function wtitle {
if [ "$TERM" == "xterm" ] ; then
# Remove the old title string in the PS1, if one is already set.
#PS1=`echo $PS1 | sed 's/^\\\\\[.+\\\\\]//g'`
PS1='${LOGNAME}@${RECHNER}:$PWD > '
export PS1="\[\033]0;$1 - \u@\h:\w\007\]$PS1"
else
echo "You are not working in xterm. I cannot set the title."
fi
}

Best Regards

Kornelis
11/06/2008 03:39:00 AM
Unknown said…
Hey thanks a lot for posting to both Roy and Kornelis. That was nice and easy and now I don't have to randomly click around my different putty windows. That's great!
6/24/2009 10:55:00 AM
mick said…
great tip. thx.
7/27/2010 09:36:00 AM
Anonymous said…
Just I need. Perfect.
Moltes gràcies.

Joan
9/10/2010 01:29:00 AM
Anonymous said…
The new modified title dosent show up if u are in `srceen` in putty
9/21/2010 02:29:00 AM
davidm said…
Thanks! Very useful and titled well so search finds it easily.
3/13/2011 08:12:00 PM
Sanjay said…
Hello Roy,
Yes it indeed works well and solves one of the irritating problems I was facing. Thanks

Sanjay
11/25/2011 07:43:00 PM
tonyboy666 said…
Actually, you just have to force the terminal in your session settings to xterm instead of default value which must be vt100 !!!

That simply did the job for me ;-)

This thread kinda put me on the good path and trail.

Thx
3/23/2012 11:10:00 AM
Hoser said…
This work very nicely when used with

PROMPT_COMMAND="wtitle \${WINDOW_TITLE:-\\\W}"

You can set the WINDOW_TITLE yourself, but it you don't, it will use the DIR you are currently in. Very handy!
7/17/2012 08:33:00 AM
Tgr said…
This drops trailing whitespaces. The solution I came up with (admittedly very ugly, I am not a shell guru):

PS1=`echo X${PS1}X | sed -r 's/^\\\\\[.+\\\\\]//g' | sed 's/^.//' | sed 's/.$//'`
11/30/2012 08:09:00 AM
Anonymous said…
This is nice. I was looking for it for some time now.
btw, is there a similar way to change the title in ksh instead of bash?
7/17/2013 03:21:00 AM
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11/05/2016 02:09:00 AM
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