Change gnome-terminal title to reflect the current directory?

Question

I want to change the title of the gnome-terminal window to reflect the current directory. Is there a way to do that? A script may be? The "change terminal title" threads did not help much. Manually when we use the command:

gnome-terminal --title=$PWD 

it works, but a new terminal instance is created (as expected). I want to be able to use the

--title=$PWD 

with the cd command.

Is there a way to achieve that?

Answer 1

since gnome-terminal uses the same control commands as xterm this page might be helpful.

Xterm Title for bash and other shells

TL;DR:

add following to your .bashrc

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD}\007"'

Answer 2

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;$(basename ${PWD})\007"' will display only the current directory as the title

Answer 3

I'm doing it like this to override the cd command and set pwd into the title:

function title { echo -en "\033]2;$1\007"; }
function cd { dir=$1; if [ -z "$dir" ]; then dir=~; fi; builtin cd "$dir" && title `pwd`; }
cd `pwd`

I just threw this into my ~/.bash_aliases. You could probably tweak this to do what you want.

Answer 4

I'm not an expert but you should try to edit your ~/.bashrc file. If I understood your problem correctly you can change your .bashrc according to my (I'm using Ubuntu 12.04). The "old" line is commented out and the new one is below it (with additional comment).

case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
  # OLD PS1 directive
    #PS1="\[\e]0;${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h: \w\a\]$PS1"
  # NEW PS1 directive, shows only current directory name as terminal window name
    PS1="\[\e]0;${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\W\a\]$PS1"
    ;;
*)
    ;;
esac

The result is that my terminal title is equal to my current directory title eg. after cd Documents/projects my terminal title is projects (if file is open the terminal name is its name)

Answer 5

Updated Answer For White Space Problem by 'basename'

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;$(basename "$(pwd)")\007"'

Upadate for answered Oct 23 '13 at 1:47 user2909452