Set the iTerm tab title to the current directory, not full path.

current-dir-in-iterm-tab-title.sh

# put this in your .bash_profile
if [ $ITERM_SESSION_ID ]; then
  export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033];${PWD##*/}\007"; ':"$PROMPT_COMMAND";
fi

# Piece-by-Piece Explanation:
# the if condition makes sure we only screw with $PROMPT_COMMAND if we're in an iTerm environment
# iTerm happens to give each session a unique $ITERM_SESSION_ID we can use, $ITERM_PROFILE is an option too
# the $PROMPT_COMMAND environment variable is executed every time a command is run
# see: ss64.com/bash/syntax-prompt.html
# we want to update the iTerm tab title to reflect the current directory (not full path, which is too long)
# echo -ne "\033;foo\007" sets the current tab title to "foo"
# see: stackoverflow.com/questions/8823103/how-does-this-script-for-naming-iterm-tabs-work
# the two flags, -n = no trailing newline & -e = interpret backslashed characters, e.g. \033 is ESC, \007 is BEL
# see: ss64.com/bash/echo.html for echo documentation
# we set the title to ${PWD##*/} which is just the current dir, not full path
# see: stackoverflow.com/questions/1371261/get-current-directory-name-without-full-path-in-bash-script
# then we append the rest of $PROMPT_COMMAND so as not to remove what was already there
# voilà!

It took me way too long to figure this out so I've put in all the documentation I could find.

Thanks a lot.

This gist is bash specific, but my googling landed me here, so in case you're using zsh, try this:

precmd() {
  # sets the tab title to current dir
  echo -ne "\e]1;${PWD##*/}\a"
}

I pieced it together from this gist & this superuser answer. Note: I removed the iTerm-specific guard because Terminal.app also supports this now.

When in tmux in iTerm2, I get this message every command:

-bash: :echo: command not found

Any ideas?

Thanks! Good job!

thank you veeeeery much!

@phaseOne - this clears up iterm command not found

'export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${PWD##*/}\007"''

https://github.com/barryclark/bashstrap/blob/master/.bash_profile#L105

This is a fantastic addition to my .bash_profile. Thanks!

This is awesome.

Just what I was looking for. Thanks!

Appreciate the Gist. This is exactly what I was looking for!

Awesome! +1

You are a gentleman sir.

Great stuff! Thanks!

Thanks! very useful 👍

This does not seem to be working in iTerm version 3.0.12

@alexey-danilov confirmed for me as well.

^^

If you get this:

-bash: :echo: command not found

Or you want to be able to add several commands to PROMPT_COMMAND, this is what I use:

# Add command to PROMPT_COMMAND (runs before each command)
# Makes sure ithe command is not already in PROMPT_COMMAND
addToPromptCommand() {
  if [[ ":$PROMPT_COMMAND:" != *":$1:"* ]]; then
    PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+"$PROMPT_COMMAND:"}$1"
  fi
}

# Set iTerm title to show current directory
if [ $ITERM_SESSION_ID ]; then
  addToPromptCommand 'echo -ne "\033];${PWD##*/}\007"'
fi

Based on:
http://superuser.com/questions/39751/add-directory-to-path-if-its-not-already-there

Great and thanks! 🥇

What worked for me was this (on MacOS sierra):

export PROMPT_COMMAND="$PROMPT_COMMAND : echo -n '\033]0;${PWD##*/}\007' "

https://gist.github.com/phette23/5270658#gistcomment-1265682 Thank you. :)

The following two commands in .bash_profile will change the tab title when you cd into a new directory (as well as list the directory contents without having to type ls ...):

# Set iTerm2 tab titles
tabTitle() { echo -ne "\033]0;"$*"\007"; }

# Always list directory contents and set title upon 'cd'
cd() { builtin cd "$@"; ls -lFah; tabTitle ${PWD##*/}; }

This also lets you set the title with tabTitle foobar from any prompt. Works great on sierra!

Thank you!

Only @alexilyaev worked for me on tmux.

None of these worked for me in iterm2 Build 3.0.14 on macOS Sierra 10.12.3 (16D32).

They either overwrote what I put in my PS_1 entry or did nothing whatsoever. My tabs and indeed my iterm2 window were always just named 'bash'. I'm trying to get the full working directory in the tab name.

You're a lifesaver, this makes my life so much easier.
Thank you!

@phette23, will the gist that you provided (thanks for taking the time to do so), show the current working directory and the current process?

@jeromecovington if you have the iterm settings checked to show the current job name, this will be appended.

If you mean process id (not sure if that's really useful but hey why not try), you can use the bash variable $$, and anything else you can think of doing in bash (e.g. current git branch, current user, etc). For the process id, I proof-of-concepted this with this modification:

export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033];($$) ${PWD##*/}\007"; ':"$PROMPT_COMMAND";

@phette23 thanks for this, it's really helpful!

I've added two lines of comment-docs to ensure that people have the correct setting in iTerm to allow this change to take effect -- without the "terminal may set tab/window title" setting checked this will not work. This may be why some people are having trouble.

See https://gist.github.com/ozydingo/cc4d400fcf754ae0f1456ab7240be604 . Could you add these two comments, in some form, to this gist?

Using the agnoster theme that also sets the prompt to show the current git branch, I found that it no longer worked correctly, even using @alexilyaev's suggestion. The only way I could get it to work for me is:

# after calling source $THEME
setTabTitle() {
  echo -ne "\033]0;${PWD##*/}\007"
}
if [ $ITERM_SESSION_ID ]; then
  export PROMPT_COMMAND="setTabTitle;$PROMPT_COMMAND"
fi

(thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/a/36669770/12663)

if [ $ITERM_SESSION_ID ]; then
  DISABLE_AUTO_TITLE="true"
  echo -ne "\033];${PWD##*/}\007"
fi

precmd() {
  echo -ne "\033];${PWD##*/}\007"
}

also use precmd function, to watch directories changes.
Alto disable auto title as well. DISABLE_AUTO_TITLE="true"

To show not just the current directory, but also the immediate parent directory, use this:

if [ $ITERM_SESSION_ID ]; then
    export PROMPT_COMMAND='i="$IFS";IFS='/';set -f;p=($PWD);set +f;IFS="$i";if [ ${#p[@]} -le 3 ];then echo -ne "\033];$PWD\007";else echo -ne "\033];${p[-2]}/${p[-1]}\007";fi;':$PROMPT_COMMAND
fi

Showing the immediate parent directory is useful when you work on several different projects with similar directory structures. For example, if you work in ~/Documents/Project1/src in one tab and ~/Documents/Project2/src in another tab, the above trick shows Project1/src and Project2/src as tab titles so that they can be distinguished easily.

For tokenizing $PWD, the credit goes to https://stackoverflow.com/a/35782319/5932368.

EDIT: the command is updated to handle p with less than three tokens.

I ran into this looking for a way to mark the current git repo i'm in. This version will display the git repository root (normally the repo name) if you're in a repository, or it will fall back to show the current working direcory

if [ $ITERM_SESSION_ID ]; then
  export PROMPT_COMMAND='git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree > /dev/null 2>&1 && echo -ne "\033];$(basename $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel))\007" || echo -ne "\033];${PWD##*/}\007"; ':"$PROMPT_COMMAND";
fi

Many thanks for this helpful stuff!

Here's a more legible version of @scumbkt19's snippet:

if [[ $ITERM_SESSION_ID ]]; then
  # Display the current git repo, or directory, in iterm tabs.
  get_iterm_label() {
    if ! git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree >/dev/null 2>&1; then
      local directory
      directory=${PWD##*/}
      echo -ne "\\033];$directory\\007"
    else
      local branch
      branch=$(basename "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)")
      echo -ne "\\033];$branch\\007"
    fi
  }
  export PROMPT_COMMAND=get_iterm_label;"${PROMPT_COMMAND}"
fi

To expand on @jhrr I've added the current branch to my tab title.

    if [[ $ITERM_SESSION_ID ]]; then
      # Display the current git repo, or directory, in iterm tabs.
      get_iterm_label() {
        if ! git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree >/dev/null 2>&1; then
          local directory
          directory=${PWD##*/}
          echo -ne "\\033];$directory\\007"
        else
          local branch
          local branchdir
          branchdir=$(basename "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)")
          branch=$(git branch 2>/dev/null | grep -e '\* ' | sed "s/^..\(.*\)/{\1}/")
          echo -ne "\\033];$branchdir $branch\\007"
        fi
      }
      export PROMPT_COMMAND=get_iterm_label;"${PROMPT_COMMAND}"
    fi

Thank you @jwmann.

Simple and elegant. This is a gem. 👍 (iTerm v3.3.2)

Did this suddenly stop working in iTerm2 v3.3.3 for anyone else than me? Does anyone know how to fix that?

Stopped working for me this morning :(

@garyking @runtimee did you try Profiles > (your profile) > Terminal > [x] "Terminal may report window title"? I'm not 100% certain that's the cause but I had the same issue, selected that, opened a new tab in the profile and it worked again.

FWIW I use Fish shell now which just has a fish_title function you can override so I don't really check in on this snippet.

stopped working for me too

stopped working for me too [2]. Checking the Profiles > (your profile) > Terminal > [x] "Terminal may report window title" didn't work for me.

Mine also stopped working.
iTerm2 v3.3.3
OSX 10.14.6
Rolled back to iTerm2 v3.3.2 did not fix it.

The tcsh version I had to do this (which I copied from here long, long ago) also stopped working this evening after I logged in, for no obvious reason.

iTerm2 v3.3.3
macOS 10.14.6

Kind of a disaster for me.....

according to the changelog for 3.3.3 on https://iterm2.com/downloads.html says

Improvements
- Change the default tab/window title to show the
  job name.

it might have made changes to the default profile if that was the one you were using "/

Ah! That was really useful, many thanks. The solution appears to be fiddle with Preferences->General and change the "Title" box to something (like "Name" -- I also unchecked "Job Name") which allows the "Applications in terminal may change the title" box to be checked. After I did that, the directory names came back as the tab titles, so I guess the script I run is allowed through.

Thanks @dvbowen, that worked perfectly.

Thanks @dvbowen!
For clarity, here's what Preferences > Profile should look like:

And .zshrc:

DISABLE_AUTO_TITLE="true"

precmd() {
  # sets the tab title to current dir
  echo -ne "\e]1;${PWD##*/}\a"
}

The above solution worked for me. 👍

Thanks for that too @dcastro.
I added an answer here: https://superuser.com/a/1481956/767288 with your suggestion.

I always get this --> bash: ::echo: command not found when I open my vscode terminal

Update: I always get this error everytime I open new terminal on vscode or every command on iterm
bash: ::echo: command not found

This is my script: (working but always show bash error: :echo: command not found)
export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033];${PWD##*/}\007";':"$PROMPT_COMMAND";

To fix the bash error :echo: command not found, remove this one --> :"$PROMPT_COMMAND";
export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033];${PWD##*/}\007"';

@kenjoegolo that makes it sound like you modified the prompt command multiple times. The ':"$PROMPT_COMMAND"; postfix is meant to preserve any existing prompt command but it seems like your existing prompt command must start with "echo", thus why ":echo" is not found. You could add a space after the colon to fix this. Obviously, if the other piece is working, then the actual echo program is available. With the old string including postfix, what is the output of echo $PROMPT_COMMAND?

For me, using zsh, adding add-zsh-hook precmd tab_title was necessary.

DISABLE_AUTO_TITLE="true"
tab_title() {
  # sets the tab title to current dir
  echo -ne "\e]1;${PWD##*/}\a"
}
add-zsh-hook precmd tab_title

Thanks Man.

When I connect via ssh path shown as ...<path>

This gist is pure gold.

This kind of confuses if two panels is open in a single window

Thanks @dvbowen!
For clarity, here's what Preferences > Profile should look like:

And .zshrc:

DISABLE_AUTO_TITLE="true"

precmd() {
  # sets the tab title to current dir
  echo -ne "\e]1;${PWD##*/}\a"
}

The above solution worked for me. 👍

+1

Is there a way to show just ~ when I'm in my home directory, and the current directory otherwise? I tried all kinds of things to nmodify ${PWD##/} to do that but can't get it to work. I know that this works: ${PWD/#$HOME/~}
But it shows the whole path when not in home directory. I tried this:
${PWD##/#$USER/~}
But this didn't work.

fish shell has a nice prompt_pwd function for this that makes sure the PWD string is compact & uses ~ for the home directory, but that's not helpful if you're using another shell.

You should just be able to add some logic to your prompt, psuedocode for it being "if PWD = $HOME then print '~' else print PWD".

Tried that but didn't work. I found a different workaround though. Instead of setting PROMPT_COMMAND, you can add the code that changes the tab name to PS1, like this:
PS1="[\033]0;\W\007]\w $ "
This shows me the full path at the command prompt but only the last directory in the tab name, or ~ if I'm in the home dir. This is perfect for me. Thanks