SSH muddles the Terminal.app title

June 24, 2020 Leave a comment

Normally, the macOS Terminal.app title bar includes the current directory name. When you connect to a remote host with openssh on macOS, the title bar gets updated to be “$(whoami)@$(hostname): $(pwd)” instead. Unfortunately when you exit ssh, the terminal title bar is not restored and continues to say you are on a remote host.

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

I’m sorry.

My solution is to use arcane escape sequences to reset the Terminal title every time bash generates a new prompt:

	# Add to ~/.bashrc
	#
	# force reset of the current directory name in terminal title
	# to reset it after SSH sessions end.
	PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;$(basename ${PWD})\007"'

view raw bashrc_restore-title.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The incantation is slightly different but conceptually the same for zsh.

	# Add to ~/.zshrc

	function clear_term_title {
	# removes the text that ssh puts into the terminal title
	printf '\033]0;\007'
	}

	PROMPT="$(clear_term_title)%% "