Research: how should DropTerm generate tab names?

Date: 2026-10-04 Question: What setting should control how a tab’s name is generated — and what do famous terminals (Guake first) actually expose for automatic tab-title generation, with which precedence rules, defaults, template languages, and rename interactions?

TL;DR

Convergence across every surveyed terminal: the shell’s OSC 0/2 title is the default automatic source; a mode setting decides whether/how it is applied; a manual rename, where it exists, is sticky (never clobbered) and cleared by an explicit empty/sentinel rename; and a length cap with truncation is the one garnish almost everyone ships. Concretely:

• Guake — the reference — exposes exactly three title settings on the General page of its preferences: a use-vte-titles bool (“Use VTE titles for tab names”, default on), a display-tab-names dropdown (“Display as tab names:” → Full Path / Abbreviated Path / Last Segment, default Full Path) that post-processes the shell title using the terminal’s cwd, and a max-tab-name-length spinner (default 100, 0 disables; truncation keeps the tail prefixed by ...). A user rename freezes the label (custom_label_set) and is reset by renaming to exactly -.
• The vte-based family shares one heritage: Guake’s settings, Tilix’s per-terminal title template, and Terminator’s editable titlebar all echo GNOME Terminal’s old “initial title + replace/before/after/ignore” pair — which GNOME Terminal itself removed in 3.14 (2014) and now shows the raw vte title. The KDE family (Konsole + Yakuake) instead bet on per-session format strings with % placeholders re-snapshotted from /proc foreground-process info.
• The modern template camp (kitty tab_title_template, Tilix ${title}/${directory}/…, WezTerm format-tab-title Lua, iTerm2 title components, Windows Terminal tabTitle+suppressApplicationTitle) all put the shell title in as one variable and layer user text/other signals around it — with manual/user title always winning over the automatic one.

Recommended setting shape for DropTerm: one enum dropdown, config key tab_title_mode, variants Shell (default; today’s behavior), ShellDirectory (shell title with its trailing cwd abbreviated / reduced to the last segment, Guake-style), and Numbered (ignore shell titles; always Terminal N) — re-titling live tabs on change like Guake’s recompute_tabs_titles, never touching title_override, keeping the bell/activity prefix outside the mode’s concern, plus an optional max_tab_title_length clamp later if wanted. Details and edge cases in Recommendation.

A mechanism primer first, since every design below rides on it:

• OSC 0 vs OSC 2. xterm’s control sequences define OSC 0 Ps = “Change both Icon Name and Window Title” and OSC 2 Ps = “Change Window Title” (OSC 1 = icon name only) — xterm ctlseqs, Operating System Commands section. Most shells and apps (bash via PROMPT_COMMAND precmd hooks — “executed before printing the primary prompt”, GNU Bash manual; zsh via precmd; vim via titlestring) emit OSC 2 (or 0) continuously, so “the terminal title” is really “the last title the child reported”.
• Title stacks. xterm’s XTWINOPS CSI 22;0|1|2 t saves and CSI 23;0|1|2 t restores icon/window titles on a stack (optional third parameter addresses slots 1-10 directly) — same ctlseqs page. kitty implements this per window with a 10-deep stack (kitty/window.py:794, :1933-1942 @ master).
• DropTerm already rides this layer. alacritty_terminal 0.25.1 — the crate DropTerm pins (Cargo.lock) — parses OSC 0 and 2 identically into set_title (vte 0.15.0 src/ansi.rs:1348-1353, local cargo checkout) and surfaces Event::Title(String) / Event::ResetTitle (on RIS) (src/term/mod.rs:2221-2231, with a CSI 22/23 t title stack capped at TITLE_STACK_MAX_DEPTH = 4096, src/term/mod.rs:42,2235-2256). DropTerm’s TermEvent::Title handling is exactly this feed (src/app.rs:7,3162-3168). Konsole-style OSC 30 (“session name”, non-standard — Session.h:473) and OSC 7 (cwd report) are not what shells typically emit for titles, but Konsole and GNOME-family terminals treat OSC 7 as a cwd source for directory-derived titles.

Findings

1. Guake — the reference: one checkbox, one dropdown, one spinner, and a sticky rename

From Guake/guake @ master (fetched 2026-10-04; schema guake/data/org.guake.gschema.xml, UI guake/data/prefs.glade, logic in guake/guake_app.py, guake/notebook.py, guake/utils.py, guake/boxes.py, guake/main.py):

Settings exposed (all on the General page of the preferences notebook, prefs.glade — page tab label “General” at L809, widgets L926-1088):

Schema verbatim: display-tab-names — “Controls how the tab names are displayed. 0: Full Path, 1: Abbreviated Path, 2: Only display the last segment of the path”; use-vte-titles — “Any terminal program can set the terminal’s title via special escape sequences… you can have easy automatically updating meaningful tab titles with this option turned on.” The dropdown, its label, and the spinner are all desensitized when “Use VTE titles” is unchecked (guake/prefs.py:855-864, :1132-1145). The combo maps positionally: set_int("display-tab-names", combo.get_active()) (prefs.py:415-418). Note max-tab-name-length carries literal #TODO PORT markers in summary/description — the key works but was migrated without polish.

Semantics — the title pipeline (guake/guake_app.py):

1. VTE’s window-title-changed signal (GTK-VTE’s OSC 0/2 feed) fires on_terminal_title_changed (guake_app.py:1195-1225). It returns immediately if use-vte-titles is false (L1204-1206) — with the setting off, the tab keeps whatever name it got at creation and is never retitled automatically.
2. If the tab has a user rename (custom_label_set), the shell title is dropped (L1217-1218); the existing custom text still updates the window title.
3. Otherwise compute_tab_title(vte) runs (guake_app.py:1160-1182):
   • a .guake.yml title: in the cwd (when load-guake-yml is on) wins over everything (L1163-1166);
   • the base is vte.get_window_title() or _("Terminal") (L1168) — the i18n’d literal “Terminal” is the no-title fallback;
   • display_tab_names == 1 (Abbreviated Path): if the title ends with the current directory, every parent component is cut to its first character and the last stays whole (L1171-1174) — e.g. ~/src/oss/l1br3/ced → ~/s/o/l/ced;
   • display_tab_names == 2 (Last Segment): the title is replaced by the last path component of the cwd, "(root)" for / (L1175-1178);
   • finally TabNameUtils.shorten applies the length cap.
4. TabNameUtils.shorten (guake/utils.py:158-167): lengths beyond max-tab-name-length become "..." + text[-max:] — the tail is kept, head elided; 0 disables truncation; and the whole clamp is skipped when use-vte-titles is off (a quirk: the spinner is meaningless then anyway).
5. A new tab gets this same computation once at creation (guake/notebook.py:438-456, new_page_with_focus → rename_page(…, self.guake.compute_tab_title(terminal), False)).

Rename interaction (sticky + sentinel): rename_page(page_index, new_text, user_set) (guake/notebook.py:459-477) applies a title only when not getattr(page, "custom_label_set", False) or user_set — a user rename permanently blocks VTE-driven retitling; and setattr(page, "custom_label_set", new_text != "-") — renaming to exactly - clears the lock so automatic titles resume. The - reset is documented in the CLI help: --rename-tab / --rename-current-tab — “Reset to default if TITLE is a single dash ‘-‘.” (guake/main.py:347-364). The rename UI is the RenameDialog (guake/dialogs.py:11-41) opened from the tab label (guake/boxes.py:698-707) or the keybind (guake_app.py:1077-1084).

Live re-titling on setting change: the GSettings handler wires max-tab-name-length and display-tab-names (guake/gsettings.py:93-94, :470-474) and recompute_tabs_titles (guake_app.py:1128-1140) re-runs compute_tab_title over all terminals. Window title follow-along is the separate set-window-title bool (update_window_title, guake_app.py:1227-1231: tab name or the saved default_window_title).

What Guake does not have: no per-tab-format template, no process-name mode (the “title” is whatever the shell reports; the dropdown merely reshapes it using the directory), no prepend/append combine mode.

2. GNOME Terminal (vte) — the ancestor dropdown, since removed

From GNOME/gnome-terminal (read-only GitLab mirror; fetched 2026-10-04):

• ≤ 3.6 (GConf era) — the classic pair. Profile keys /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/title (string, default Terminal) and …/title_mode (string, default "replace"), schema text verbatim: “the dynamically-set title can erase the configured title, go before it, go after it, or replace it. The possible values are "replace", "before", "after", and "ignore".” (src/gnome-terminal.schemas.in @ tag 3.6.2).
• The dropdown strings (still present as a GtkListStore at 3.12, src/profile-preferences.ui:43-62): “Replace initial title”, “Append initial title”, “Prepend initial title”, “Keep initial title” (translatable comment: “When terminal commands set their own titles”), under the profile Title section alongside the “Initial title” entry (title-entry, bound to the title key — src/profile-editor.c:970-972 @ 3.12.0).
• Removal. By 3.12 the GSettings schema has no title-mode key at all — only title survives, whose description still gestures at “the title_mode setting” (stale text), and the mode dropdown was already vestigial in the UI (the four-option liststore remains in profile-preferences.ui but no widget binds it; the Initial-title entry still binds title). The entry and the whole Title section were then removed on 2014-04-16 — commits e9cb8fea14 “Remove the static title setting from profile preferences” and 9bbe19e98f “Remove the action and shortcut to set a static title from the menus” — in the GNOME 3.13 dev cycle; verified: tag 3.14.0 has neither title-entry nor any model2 usage. The old dialog’s reset semantics survive in 9cb8d243dd “revert to dynamically setting the title if the user sets it to an empty”.
• Today (master). No title keys in src/org.gnome.Terminal.gschema.xml at all. The tab title is the raw vte window title: terminal-notebook.cc:121-122,146-147 binds the screen’s title property straight to the notebook page; the window title is the active screen’s title with an i18n "Terminal" fallback (src/terminal-window.cc:2482-2490). “Set _Title…” menu items exist in the hamburger (src/terminal-headermenu.ui:61-64, action win.set-title) and the tab context menu (src/terminal-notebook.ui:66-70, notebook.notebook-set-title) but both carry <attribute name="hidden-when">action-missing</attribute> — and I could not find either action installed in terminal-window.cc’s action tables (:2061-2123), so on stock master these items stay hidden (unverified whether a build flag installs them).

So the vte heritage Guake shares is exactly this initial-title + four-way mode idea — Guake kept a simplified cousin (use/don’t-use + reshape) after GNOME Terminal abandoned it.

3. Konsole — per-session format strings with % placeholders, local and remote

From KDE/konsole @ master (fetched 2026-10-04) and the Konsole Handbook, “Configure Tab Settings Dialog”:

Settings exposed. Two format strings per profile — and per session, overridable: profile keys LocalTabTitleFormat and RemoteTabTitleFormat (src/profile/Profile.cpp:77-79), edited on the profile’s Tabs page (src/widgets/EditProfileDialog.cpp:707-713). The handbook: “The name format, the remote tab title format, and the color of the current tab can be changed from this dialog. The dialog can be displayed via the menu, the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+S or by double-clicking on the tab in the tab bar. These changes are temporary and can be made permanent by editing the current profile.”

Defaults: LocalTabTitleFormat = %d : %n (e.g. src : bash), RemoteTabTitleFormat = (%u) %H (Profile.cpp:77-79).

Placeholder mini-language (handbook table, confirmed against the implementation in src/session/Session.cpp:1351-1430):

Remote tokens resolve from the parsed ssh command line (src/SSHProcessInfo.cpp:202-244); %u in the local format also arms a “user name required” check (Session.cpp:750-756).

Semantics / precedence:

• Local vs remote switch: the foreground process is inspected via /proc (ProcessInfo); when it is ssh, the Remote format + ssh-derived tokens are used, otherwise the Local format + local process info (Session::getDynamicTitle, Session.cpp:1325-1348, isRemote :1317-1323).
• The shell’s title is just %w. OSC 0 and OSC 2 land in _userTitle (Session::setSessionAttribute, Session.cpp:665-670; OSC number mapping in src/session/Session.h:461-479 — IconNameAndWindowTitle = 0, IconName = 1, WindowTitle = 2, plus Konsole’s non-standard SessionName = 30, SessionIcon = 32, SessionColor = 34). A format without %w simply never shows the shell title — the mode axis is the format string.
• OSC 30 replaces the format. A program sending Konsole’s non-standard OSC 30 (“session name”) overwrites the whole local tab title format for that session (Session.cpp:691-697) — the strongest program-side override any surveyed terminal offers.
• Recompute cadence: the title is re-snapshotted on session start and after user interaction (a 2 s debounce timer), not on every output byte (SessionController::snapshot, src/session/SessionController.cpp:335-352, connects at :201,214-222); OSC-driven changes also re-apply immediately via sessionAttributeChanged (:2048-2075, which substitutes %w/%# into the displayed title).
• Rename = editing the session’s formats, sticky against the profile. The tab context menu / Ctrl+Alt+S “&Configure or Rename Tab…” (SessionController.cpp:868-872) opens the “Tab Properties” dialog (src/RenameTabDialog.cpp:25) pre-filled with the session’s local/remote formats (SessionController.cpp:1086-1124); accepting sets the per-session formats and marks tabTitleSetByUser(true) (Session.cpp:765-772), after which profile-level format changes no longer apply to that session (src/session/SessionManager.cpp:231-234). There is no separate “clear rename” — you just edit the format back.

4. Yakuake — Konsole’s machinery, a thin sticky-rename shell around it

From KDE/yakuake @ master (fetched 2026-10-04):

• Yakuake embeds konsolepart and takes titles from it: the part’s setWindowCaption signal feeds the session’s title (app/terminal.cpp:35-43), which flows to the tab bar as automated titles (app/mainwindow.cpp:917 — titleChanged(int,QString) → setTabTitleAutomated). So all of Konsole’s behavior above — formats, % tokens, OSC handling — applies verbatim; Yakuake adds no title settings of its own (its skins, data/skins/*/title.skin, only paint the bar).
• Its one own contribution is the rename gate: setTabTitle(sessionId, newTitle, interactive) (app/tabbar.cpp:867-885) ignores automated (program) titles once m_tabTitlesSetInteractive is set; an interactive rename sets the flag, and an empty interactive title clears it so automatic titles resume. Affordances: double-clicking a tab opens an inline line edit (tabbar.cpp:693,747-775), and the tab context menu leases Konsole’s rename-session action (tabbar.cpp:114) — the same “sticky rename + empty clears” shape as DropTerm’s commit_rename, and Guake’s with - instead of empty.

5. kitty — tab_title_template, the richest template language

From kitty conf docs (fetched 2026-10-04) and kovidgoyal/kitty @ master:

Settings exposed (all in the Tab bar group of kitty.conf): tab_bar_style (default fade; fade/slant/separator/powerline/custom/hidden), tab_bar_min_tabs (default 2), tab_title_template (a template string), active_tab_title_template (default none → falls back to tab_title_template), tab_title_max_length (default 0 = no limit; vertical tab bars size for ~20 title cells when unset), tab_activity_symbol (default none), bell_on_tab (default "🔔 " — “Some text or a Unicode symbol to show on the tab if a window in the tab that does not have focus has a bell”), plus the bar color/style keys.

Default template, verbatim:

tab_title_template "{fmt.fg.red}{bell_symbol}{activity_symbol}{secure_input_symbol}{fmt.fg.tab}{tab.last_focused_progress_percent}{title}"

and the doc’s backward-compat rule: “if {bell_symbol} or {activity_symbol} are not present in the template, they are prepended to it.” So the shipped default title = (bell 🔔) + (activity) + (progress %) + the tab’s title, colored red-then-normal.

Template mini-language. Python format-string machinery with styling directives — “you can use, for instance, {layout_name[:2].upper()}” and {fmt.fg.red}, {fmt.bold}, {fmt.fg.color0..255}, {fmt.bg.tab} etc. Available variables (docs list, verbatim names): title, index (usable with goto_tab N), layout_name, session_name, active_session_name, num_windows, num_window_groups, secure_input_symbol, tab.active_wd, tab.active_exe (and …_oldest_… variants; both marked “expensive, requires syscall”), max_title_length, keyboard_mode, tab.last_focused_progress_percent, tab.progress_percent, tab.children_mem_usage, and {custom} (calls draw_title(data) from tab_bar.py in the config dir). There is also a window-title counterpart (window_title_template, with {title}, {bell_symbol}, {activity_symbol}, {progress_percent}, {custom}, {fmt}, {is_active}) for per-window title bars.

Precedence. A tab’s effective title is self.name or self.title (kitty/tabs.py:561-563): the user title wins, and self.title is the active window’s OSC title (tabs.py:556-559; a window’s own title is override_title or child_title, kitty/window.py:906-908, where the no-OSC default is the program basename — window.py:792). The remote control command kitten @ set-tab-title [options] TITLE ... sets name; “If you do not specify a title, the title of the currently active window in the tab is used” — i.e. an empty call resets to automatic (remote-control docs; Tab::set_title does self.name = title or '', tabs.py:573-574). kitty also implements the xterm title stack per window (10-deep, window.py:794,1933-1942).

6. WezTerm — default “index: active pane title”, full control via the format-tab-title Lua event

From wezterm docs (markdown source at wezterm/wezterm docs/config/lua/window-events/format-tab-title.md @ main, fetched 2026-10-04) and wezterm-gui/src/tabbar.rs @ main:

Default title (no config): tab.tab_title if non-empty, else the active pane’s title (the pane’s OSC title), prefixed "N: " when show_tab_index_in_tab_bar is true (the default) — wezterm-gui/src/tabbar.rs:220-242. Numbering base toggled by tab_and_split_indices_are_zero_based. Progress glyphs (ConEmu-style OSC 9;4 percent) are appended when the pane reports progress (tabbar.rs:244-250).

Settings: show_tab_index_in_tab_bar = true (default), hide_tab_bar_if_only_one_tab = false (default; “If set to true, when there is only a single tab, the tab bar is hidden”), tab_max_width (default 16 glyphs, retro tab bar only), tab_bar_style (styling of new-tab button etc.).

The template escape hatch — format-tab-title: a synchronous Lua event; params tab, tabs, panes, config, hover, max_width; the handler returns a string or a table of FormatItems (styled spans, as in wezterm.format), or nil to fall back to the built-in computation (“If the event encounters an error… the default tab title text will be computed and used instead”). It is called twice per tab (measure pass, then render pass with final max_width). The doc’s canonical helper encodes the precedence explicitly:

function tab_title(tab_info)
  local title = tab_info.tab_title
  if title and #title > 0 then return title end   -- explicit tab title wins
  return tab_info.active_pane.title               -- else the active pane's title
end

Rename: wezterm cli set-tab-title TITLE (with --tab-id/--pane-id; since 20230408-112425) sets tab_title; tab:set_title() in Lua is the in-process equivalent. TabInformation exposes tab_id, tab_index, is_active, is_last_active, active_pane, panes, window_id, window_title, tab_title for template authors.

7. Tilix — vte heritage plus a full ${token} mini-language on the title bar

From gnunn1/tilix @ master (fetched 2026-10-04; schema data/gsettings/com.gexperts.Tilix.gschema.xml, logic source/gx/tilix/terminal/terminal.d, tokens source/gx/tilix/constants.d):

Settings exposed. Profile key terminal-title (schema L753-757): “The string to display as the terminal title … supports tokens which are replaced at runtime, additionally pango markup can be used as well.” — default ${id}: ${title}, edited on the profile’s Title page with a variables-dropdown helper (source/gx/tilix/prefeditor/titleeditor.d:41-77 inserts the chosen token into the entry). Chrome keys: terminal-title-style (normal/small/none, default normal), terminal-title-show-when-single (default true), control-click-titlebar (default false), and global process-monitor (default false) which gates ${process}.

Token mini-language (constants.d:122-133, substitution in terminal.d:1306-1336):

Session-level tokens (constants.d:167-174): ${terminalCount}, ${terminalNumber}, ${activeTerminalTitle} — the sidebar session name defaults to ${title} (session-name, schema L205-209), and the window title template app-title defaults to ${appName}: ${sessionName} (L175-179).

Precedence / rename. The computed title is _overrideTitle if set, else the profile terminal-title template, then token substitution (terminal.d:1273-1284). The per-terminal title bar’s menu opens an edit dialog (title/badge/command) that sets _overrideTitle (terminal.d:617-629) — a user override that beats the template until cleared; it is persisted in the session JSON (terminal.d:4086-4088) and can also be set by triggers (TriggerAction.UPDATE_TITLE, terminal.d:1722-1725).

8. Terminator — per-terminal titlebar with an inline-editable custom title

From gnome-terminator/terminator @ master (fetched 2026-10-04):

• Each terminal can wear a titlebar (show_titlebar, default True — terminatorlib/config.py:244; hidden automatically when there’s a single ungrouped terminal — titlebar.py:196-204) whose label shows heldmarker + termtext + " COLSxROWS" (the size suffix toggle is title_hide_sizetext, titlebar.py:109-113).
• termtext is fed by vte’s window-title-changed (terminal.py:521-522 → :178), with the fallback vte.get_window_title() or str(self.command) — the configured command stands in when the shell sets nothing (terminal.py:1014-1016).
• The label itself is an EditableLabel: “On double-click or key binding the label is editable, entering an empty [string] will revert back to automatic text” (terminatorlib/editablelabel.py:25-29; the empty-commit reset is :118-129). Custom titles persist in the layout as title (terminal.py:1957,1981). Supporting config: title_font (Sans 9), title_use_system_font, title_at_bottom, and the title_receive_/inactive_/transmit_ fg/bg color pairs for broadcast states.

9. iTerm2 (macOS) — profile Title components + the “apps may change title” toggle

From iterm2.com and Session Title docs (fetched 2026-10-04), plus gnachman/iTerm2 @ master:

• Settings > Profiles > General > Title is a menu of separately enableable items, “combined to form the session’s title”: Session Name (defaults to the profile name), Profile Name, Profile & Session Name (the first three mutually exclusive), Job (foreground job), User, Host, PWD, TTY — plus items offered by running Python Session Title Providers. “The session’s title is shown in per-pane title bars, when visible; it is also the default tab title. The current tab title also serves as the window title.” A per-tab override is available via Window > Edit Tab Title.
• Shipped default: Job only — the profile-default dictionary ships KEY_TITLE_COMPONENTS : @(iTermTitleComponentsJob) (sources/Settings/iTermProfilePreferences.m:1276; migration from the deprecated ShowJobName default-of-YES at :1750-1801).
• The OSC toggle. Checkbox “Applications in terminal may change the title” — “When enabled, a control sequence can change a session’s or window’s title.” Notably, the control-sequence title lands in the Session Name component: “Receiving a control sequence that updates the ‘icon title’. These are OSC 0 and OSC 1.” (session-title docs) — so unlike the vte family, OSC does not replace the whole composed title, it feeds one component of it.
• Tab subtitles (a second line, settable by control sequence or as an interpolated string) exist as a separate feature.

10. Windows Terminal — fixed tabTitle vs OSC, gated by suppressApplicationTitle

From learn.microsoft.com and microsoft/terminal @ main (doc/cascadia/profiles.schema.json, fetched 2026-10-04):

• Profile tabTitle (schema): “If set, will replace the name as the title to pass to the shell on startup. Some shells (like bash) may choose to ignore this initial value, while others (cmd, powershell) may use this value over the lifetime of the application.”
• Profile suppressApplicationTitle (boolean, default false): “When set to true, tabTitle overrides the default title of the tab and any title change messages from the application will be suppressed. When set to false, tabTitle behaves as normal.” The troubleshooting page spells out the recipe: adding only suppressApplicationTitle: true pins the tab to the profile name; add tabTitle for a custom string.
• newTab action args (actions page): tabTitle (“Title of the new tab”) and suppressApplicationTitle (true/false; “If not provided, the behavior is inherited from the profile’s settings. In order to enter a new tab title and have that title persist, this must be set to true”) — i.e. a title passed without suppression is exactly the “initial title” idea: handed to the shell and immediately overwritable by OSC.
• Rename stickiness. The renameTab action ({ "command": { "action": "renameTab", "title": "Foo" } }) resets with "title": null — “If omitted, this command will revert the tab title back to its original value” — and openTabRenamer (Terminal.OpenTabRenamer) turns the tab title into a text field: “Clearing the text field will reset the tab title back to the default for the current shell instance” (same actions page). Renames are runtime tab state, not persisted profile config.

11. Counterpoints: Alacritty, foot, Ghostty — minimal or none

• Alacritty has no tabs at all; titles are window-only. Current config (man page extra/man/alacritty.5.scd @ master): title — “Window title. Default: Alacritty” — and dynamic_title (under window) — “Allow terminal applications to change Alacritty’s window title. Default: true”. History: a top-level dynamic_title existed until it moved into the window table (CHANGELOG.md, 0.5.0/0.6.0-era entries). The false value is the primitive suppressApplicationTitle/locked-title-style opt-out, applied to a window instead of a tab.
• foot also has no tab bar (one window, one terminal). Its foot.ini [main] section has title (“Initial window title. Default: foot”) and locked-title — “If enabled, applications are not allowed to change the title at run-time. Default: no” (doc/foot.ini.5.scd @ master). No template, no modes — the OSC title just lands.
• Ghostty documents a single title key: “This will force the title of the window to be this title at all times and Ghostty will ignore any set title escape sequences programs (such as Neovim) may send”; unset, titles follow the running program (config reference). No tab-title options exist (Linux GTK builds have no tabs; macOS tabs are native window tabs wearing the window title).

What DropTerm has to work with

Verified in this repo:

• The pipeline today (src/tabs.rs): a Tab stores title — “the last title its shell reported, falling back to the default from next_default_title” — and title_override — “a user rename, which shell title changes never clobber” (src/tabs.rs:81-108). Defaults are Terminal N, numbered from the tab’s id (next_default_title, src/tabs.rs:304-308). apply_shell_title lands a shell report only while title_override.is_none() (src/tabs.rs:310-318), and commit_rename makes a non-empty commit the sticky override while an empty commit clears it, letting shell titles resume (src/tabs.rs:320-332) — already the exact Guake/kitty/Yakuake/Terminator shape, minus the - sentinel (empty is the reset, like Yakuake).
• The feed: alacritty_terminal’s Event::Title / Event::ResetTitle reach the app as TermEvent (src/app.rs:7); Title applies via apply_shell_title and doubles as the cwd-change sample point (src/app.rs:3162-3168); ResetTitle (shell RIS) restores next_default_title under the same override gate (src/app.rs:3170-3181). The rename remote command funnels through commit_rename (src/app.rs:1129-1135), as does the tab bar’s inline rename overlay (src/app.rs:1505).
• Attention markers are render-time prefixes, not part of the stored title: Attention::marker() yields "• "/"🔔 " and the tab bar concatenates marker + title when laying out paragraphs (src/tabs.rs:66-73, src/tab_bar.rs:807-827) — so any title-mode change leaves them untouched for free. Long titles already clip at a per-button max width (src/tab_bar.rs:188-191); there is no character-count cap.
• Session persistence saves/restores both title and title_override (src/session.rs:36-43,51-57,93-95,123-124; restore reapplies them so the fresh shell’s first OSC title can’t clobber a saved rename, src/app.rs:575-585) — a mode that ignores shell titles must keep writing title (it stays the display value) but simply stop applying OSC reports.
• A directory signal already exists: check_tab_cwd resolves the shell process’s cwd via /proc/{pid}/cwd on every title event (src/app.rs:1615-1634, Terminal::working_directory at src/terminal/engine.rs:486-490) — the same fact Guake’s vte get_current_directory() feeds display-tab-names, so a Guake-style abbreviate/last-segment mode is implementable without new process machinery.
• Where the setting slots in: the config is one enum-per-key cosmic-config file with serde RON values (src/config.rs:3-11,121-197) — the TabPosition enum + tab_position field + Display impl (src/config.rs:103-119,137-140) is the exact pattern to copy, default wired in DropTermConfig::default (src/config.rs:199-226). The settings window renders enum dropdowns from &[(value, label)] option tables with pure dropdown_selected/dropdown_write planners (src/settings.rs:430-433,457-497,807-840); a new key joins ConfigKey
  • PlannedWrite and lands in a section card (Section::title, src/settings.rs:642-652) — Geometry already hosts tab-related keys (Tab bar position, src/settings.rs:664). Missing keys load as defaults (additive, CONFIG_VERSION stays 1 — pinned by tests like src/config.rs:572-612), and the README documents keys in prose (README.md:137,150) with a live-apply table (README.md:241).

Recommendation

A single dropdown in the settings window, shaped after Guake (its General page is the direct precedent) but collapsed to what DropTerm can honestly compute today:

1. Enum + config key: TabTitleMode in src/config.rs (mirror TabPosition), serialized as RON variants, config key tab_title_mode (one file under ~/.config/cosmic/io.github.l1br3_io.CosmicExtDropterm/v1/, listed in README.md:137’s key inventory). Variants and display strings for the dropdown (src/settings.rs option-table pattern):
   • Shell — “Shell title” (default): exactly today’s behavior — OSC 0/2 lands in Tab.title unless a rename is set. This matches the shipped default of every surveyed peer that has a choice (Guake use-vte-titles=true, kitty/WezTerm {title}-centric defaults, GNOME Terminal’s implicit replace).
   • ShellDirectory — “Shell title, shortened path”: keep the shell title, but post-process it Guake-style (compute_tab_title’s display-tab-names logic, guake_app.py:1171-1178): when the title ends with the tab’s cwd (already tracked via check_tab_cwd), abbreviate parent components to one character; when the title has no directory information, reduce to the cwd’s last segment. This gives the “tabs that stay readable at 3-word width” Guake users actually select.
   • Numbered — “Terminal number”: ignore shell titles entirely; Tab.title stays/parks at next_default_title(id) (Terminal N) — Guake’s use-vte-titles=false (title frozen at creation) and GNOME Terminal’s ignore/”Keep initial title” mode; also the suppressApplicationTitle audience (people whose shells spam junk titles). TermEvent::Title still fires check_tab_cwd — the cwd gate is not a title decision and must keep working.
2. Placement/label: a “Tab titles” row in the Behavior card (Section::Behavior, src/settings.rs:648) — or Geometry next to “Tab bar position”; Behavior fits better since this is semantics, not layout. Label “Tab title source” (keystone: Guake labels the group “Display as tab names:”, kitty “tab_title_template”).
3. Rename stays orthogonal and sticky: title_override continues to win over every mode (all four peers with renames agree: Guake custom_label_set, kitty name or title, WezTerm tab_title first, Yakuake m_tabTitlesSetInteractive), and the empty-commit clear (commit_rename, src/tabs.rs:325-332) remains the documented reset — no - sentinel needed (empty is already the idiom in Yakuake, Windows Terminal’s renamer, and Terminator).
4. Live re-title on change like Guake’s recompute_tabs_titles (guake_app.py:1128-1140): on ConfigChanged, recompute every tab’s title from its new-mode rule (for Numbered, snap to next_default_title(id); for ShellDirectory, re-derive from the cached cwd; for Shell, re-apply the last reported OSC title — which means the app must keep storing the raw report even in other modes; the cheapest honest version stores the raw report in a new shell_title field or simply re-derives on next event). Renamed tabs are skipped entirely.
5. Bell/activity prefix: unchanged — markers are render-time (src/tab_bar.rs:821-827), exactly kitty’s model where bell_symbol is template chrome, not title content.
6. Edge cases:
   • Empty reported titles: keep the current Terminal N fallback chain (next_default_title); peers hard-fallback too (Guake _("Terminal"), GNOME Terminal _("Terminal"), kitty appname, WezTerm pane title).
   • Truncation/max length: defer. Guake’s max-tab-name-length=100 tail-truncation is the only peer precedent with a char cap, and DropTerm already clips at the button level (src/tab_bar.rs:190-191). If ever added: a max_tab_title_length: u16 with 0 = unlimited and Guake’s "..." + tail semantics, clamped in DropTermConfig::clamped.
   • Session persistence: session.rs keeps writing title + title_override unchanged; a restored tab re-titles per the live mode like any other tab.
   • Remote rename-tab (src/app.rs:945-951,1129-1135) is a rename and keeps its override semantics in all modes.

Not recommended now: a full template mini-language (Konsole %, kitty/foot {}/${} tokens). Every template peer needs data feeds DropTerm doesn’t maintain (foreground process name per tab, host/user state, per-window enumeration); Guake’s evidence says a quake terminal’s users are served by the shell title + directory reshaping + a length cap, and a format-tab-title-class escape hatch can be added later without breaking the enum (it would be a fourth variant, Custom, carrying a template string — the WezTerm/kitty convergence point).

Sources

• Guake @ master (fetched 2026-10-04): gschema guake/data/org.guake.gschema.xml (use-vte-titles, display-tab-names, max-tab-name-length, set-window-title, rename-current-tab); prefs UI guake/data/prefs.glade L809, L926-1088; wiring guake/prefs.py L403-421, L855-864, L1132-1145; title pipeline guake/guake_app.py L1128-1140, L1160-1182, L1195-1231, L1341-1342; sticky rename guake/notebook.py L438-477; truncation guake/utils.py L158-167; rename dialog guake/boxes.py L698-707, guake/dialogs.py L11-41; CLI sentinel guake/main.py L347-364; change handler guake/gsettings.py L93-94, L470-474 — https://github.com/Guake/guake
• GNOME Terminal @ tags 3.6.2 / 3.8.0 / 3.12.0 / 3.14.0 / 3.44.1 / master (GitHub read-only mirror, fetched 2026-10-04): src/gnome-terminal.schemas.in (3.6.2, title_mode); src/org.gnome.Terminal.gschema.xml (3.12.0 title key; 3.44.1/master absence); src/profile-preferences.ui (3.12.0 L43-62 mode strings; 3.14.0 absence); src/profile-editor.c L970-972 (3.12.0); master src/terminal-notebook.cc L121-122, L146-147, src/terminal-window.cc L2482-2490, L2061-2123, src/terminal-headermenu.ui L61-64, src/terminal-notebook.ui L66-70; history commits e9cb8fea14, 9bbe19e98f, 9cb8d243dd, 51ccbaa13a — https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-terminal (mirror of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-terminal)
• Konsole @ master (fetched 2026-10-04): defaults src/profile/Profile.cpp L77-79; tokens + OSC mapping src/session/Session.h L461-479, src/session/Session.cpp L659-697, L750-756, L1317-1348, L1351-1430; ssh tokens src/SSHProcessInfo.cpp L202-244; recompute src/session/SessionController.cpp L196-232, L335-352, L868-872, L1086-1124, L2048-2075; rename stickiness src/session/SessionManager.cpp L231-234; dialog src/RenameTabDialog.cpp L25; profile UI src/widgets/EditProfileDialog.cpp L707-713 — https://github.com/KDE/konsole; handbook “Configure Tab Settings Dialog” (token tables, Ctrl+Alt+S, double-click, temporary-vs-profile): https://docs.kde.org/trunk_kf6/en/konsole/konsole/console-dialogs.html
• Yakuake @ master (fetched 2026-10-04): app/terminal.cpp L35-43; app/mainwindow.cpp L917; app/tabbar.cpp L114, L693, L747-775, L867-885; skins data/skins/*/{title,tabs}.skin — https://github.com/KDE/yakuake
• kitty: conf docs (fetched 2026-10-04) — Tab bar group (tab_bar_style, tab_bar_min_tabs, tab_title_max_length, tab_activity_symbol, bell_on_tab, tab_title_template default + variable list, Python-format note, prepend rule, active_tab_title_template, window_title_template): https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/conf/; remote control (kitten @ set-tab-title): https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/remote-control/; source @ master: kitty/tabs.py L552-563, L573-574; kitty/window.py L792-794, L906-908, L1933-1942 — https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty
• WezTerm: format-tab-title docs (params, return, fallback, canonical tab_title-vs-pane-title helper, two-pass layout): https://wezterm.org/config/lua/window-events/format-tab-title.html (markdown @ docs/config/lua/window-events/format-tab-title.md in wezterm/wezterm @ main, fetched 2026-10-04); show_tab_index_in_tab_bar, hide_tab_bar_if_only_one_tab, tab_max_width (docs/config/lua/config/*.md); CLI docs/cli/cli/set-tab-title.md + docs/examples/cmd-synopsis-wezterm-cli-set-tab-title--help.txt; default computation wezterm-gui/src/tabbar.rs L203-250; TabInformation docs/config/lua/TabInformation.md
• Tilix @ master (fetched 2026-10-04): schema data/gsettings/com.gexperts.Tilix.gschema.xml L175-179, L205-209, L215-224, L490-501, L753-757; tokens source/gx/tilix/constants.d L122-174; pipeline source/gx/tilix/terminal/terminal.d L617-629, L1273-1284, L1306-1336, L1722-1725, L4086-4088; prefs helper source/gx/tilix/prefeditor/titleeditor.d L41-77 — https://github.com/gnunn1/tilix
• Terminator @ master (fetched 2026-10-04): terminatorlib/titlebar.py L102-121, L185-204; terminatorlib/terminal.py L175-191, L521-522, L1014-1016, L1957-1981; terminatorlib/editablelabel.py L25-29, L118-129; terminatorlib/config.py L244, L279 — https://github.com/gnome-terminator/terminator
• iTerm2: Preferences → Profiles → General (Title menu, “Applications in terminal may change the title”): https://iterm2.com/documentation-preferences-profiles-general.html; Session Title (components, OSC 0/1 → Session Name, Window > Edit Tab Title, title providers): https://iterm2.com/documentation-session-title.html (both fetched 2026-10-04); default component sources/Settings/iTermProfilePreferences.m L1276, L1750-1801 @ master — https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2
• Windows Terminal: profile schema (tabTitle, suppressApplicationTitle with default: false) doc/cascadia/profiles.schema.json @ main (fetched 2026-10-04) — https://github.com/microsoft/terminal; Actions (newTab args incl. the persist-requires-suppress note; renameTab with null reset; openTabRenamer clearing note): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/actions; troubleshooting (suppress → profile name; + tabTitle for custom): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/troubleshooting
• Counterpoints: Alacritty man extra/man/alacritty.5.scd @ master (title, dynamic_title default true) and CHANGELOG.md (option moves) — https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty; foot doc/foot.ini.5.scd @ master (title, locked-title default no) — https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot; Ghostty config reference (title forces/ignores OSC) — https://ghostty.org/docs/config/reference
• Mechanism: xterm ctlseqs (OSC 0/1/2 definitions; XTWINOPS CSI 22/23 ; 0|1|2 t save/restore with 1-10 stack slots): https://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html; GNU Bash manual (PROMPT_COMMAND executes before the primary prompt): https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html; DropTerm’s own dependency chain: alacritty_terminal 0.25.1 src/term/mod.rs L42, L2221-2256 and vte 0.15.0 src/ansi.rs L1348-1353, L1742-1743 (local cargo checkout, Cargo.lock)
• DropTerm itself: src/tabs.rs L66-108, L304-332; src/app.rs L7, L575-585, L945-951, L1123-1135, L1505, L1615-1634, L3162-3181; src/session.rs L36-57, L93-95, L123-124; src/tab_bar.rs L188-191, L807-827; src/terminal/engine.rs L486-490; src/config.rs L103-119, L121-226, L572-612; src/settings.rs L403-497, L642-682, L807-840; README.md L137, L150, L172, L241