As CLI tools become more and more popular, it's not unusual that I find I have more than one command, bash, or PowerShell window open. Often, each window is serving a specific purpose. While I really like that I can integrate a command shell right into Visual Studio Code, when I'm not doing that it's nice to be able to give each window a name that makes sense.

Setting Window Title of Windows cmd Prompt

To set the title on a cmd window, just type:

title This is my new title

Here's the result:

Setting Window Title of PowerShell Window

For PowerShell, it's not quite as simple. You need to run the following command:

$host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = "New Title"

The good news is that you get statement completion, so you can just type the first letter of each item after $host (except WindowPosition shows up before WindowTitle, so hold shift-tab to cycle to the next completion option). Or just bookmark this tip and come back when you forget. If you know you saw it on my blog, you can narrow down your google search by throwing 'ardalis' in there - that's what I do to find my own tips since I can't remember them all, either.

When I'm working on the documentation for ASP.NET Core, I sometimes have multiple windows devoted to running the documentation locally, and working with git. I might have a window like this one:

The nice thing about this approach is that if you have more than one PowerShell (or other shell) window running in the task bar, you can easily differentiate which one you need:

I haven't worked as much with bash shells, but if you're looking to do something like this there, I think this might help.