changing terminal window title

[dbaker]

I feel like this a bit of a silly question...
I'm using xfce4-terminal and I love being able to rename windows by double clicking on the tab, it's very convenient. However, I can only do this when I have multiple tabs open, obviously. How can I change the window title without having to open it in a tab first?

[millusions]

i dont use xfce, but in kterm and gnome-terminal i belive its in the configuration

[jlittle]

...I'm using xfce4-terminal ... How can I change the window title ...

I'm not sure I understand what you're doing, but xfce4-terminal supports the xterm sequence for setting the window title. Many people use it with bash's PROMPT_COMMAND variable to put the current directory in the window title. In bash if I

PROMPT_COMMAND=""       # I reset this, or it will immediately overwrite my new title
echo -en "\e]0;The Knights who say Ni\007"

the window title has the Monty Python reference.

[dbaker]

that command doesn't do anything for me :\

xfce4-terminal automatically sets the the window title to the current directory; there's an option to turn that off in the preferences or change the way it's displayed, but no way to set the title for each window yourself.

surely I can't be the only person using the tab-renaming feature of xfce4-terminal?! other terminals have that feature, too. I use it to make it clearer to myself what each tab is for: I'll have one named "assignment", one named "server" etc. I want to be able to rename single, untabbed windows in the same way. If I rename a tab it changes the window title to the new name, but I can only do that if it's a tab. I'm working around it by creating new tabs, renaming them, then detaching them into single windows. Hope that makes sense!

[jlittle]

xfce4-terminal automatically sets the the window title to the current directory; there's an option to turn that off in the preferences or change the way it's displayed, but no way to set the title for each window yourself.

Are you sure? I installed xfce4-terminal from the repos (and got version 0.6.3), and in it I can't find a way to set the title to the current directory;
I would suspect that it's your shell setting the title to the current directory, because only your shell knows what that is; it's a property of the process running the shell. What is your shell, BTW?

Anyway, if I click "Terminal" on the menu bar the first option is "Set Title...". Maybe you just need to enable the menu bar on the right-click menu and click Terminal -> Set Title. Also, when I start xfce4-terminal I can use xfce4-terminal --title="Norwegian Blue".

If a title is set, then a "dynamically-set" title is ignored; maybe you have a such title set, stopping the echo command setting it.

[dbaker]

I'm using bash. it did occur to me that there might already be something in .bashrc setting the window title, but this is what I see in terminal preferences:


I have the menubar hidden, which is why I didn't see the 'set title' option. pity there doesn't seem to be a way to set a keyboard shortcut for it..