How do you set the terminal tab title from Node.js?

Question

I'm aware that this can be done manually from the terminal using:

echo -n -e "\033]0;My terminal tab title\007"

I tried putting this into a console.log and process.stdout.write and fiddling with the escaping, but I can't get it to work.

Answer 1

To save anyone reading this a bit of time, here is a function that will do it in strict mode:

function setTerminalTitle(title)
{
  process.stdout.write(
    String.fromCharCode(27) + "]0;" + title + String.fromCharCode(7)
  );
}

Answer 2

There is node library for that: node-bash-title

Usage in node

To install the library:

npm install node-bash-title --save

And within your script:

const setTitle = require('node-bash-title');
setTitle('🍻  Server');

Usage in NPM script

This package also provides an executable script. You can use that in your npm scripts. For example:

"scripts": {
    "start:dev": "set-bash-title server && node server/app.js"
    "start:prod": "node server/app.js"
 },

So you can remove the title script from your code. Furthermore, the title is only set if you want to set a title(in development mode). In production mode you may not want to set a title as your script may not be executed in a XTerm :)