misterunknown / tmux-window-renamer

This tool renames a tmux window to a defined string, as long as the parent command is running. It is especially developed for usage in combination with ssh.

tmux-window-renamer

This tool can rename tmux windows while a parent command is running. The intented use case is to rename the current tmux window to the hostname of a SSH session.

Compile

You have to have a C compiler, e.g. gcc. In Debian/Ubuntu you can compile this program as follows:

$ sudo apt install git gcc
$ git clone https://github.com/misterunknown/tmux-window-renamer.git
$ cd tmux-window-renamer
$ gcc -o tmux-window-renamer tmux-window-renamer.c
$ sudo ln -s $(realpath tmux-window-renamer) /usr/local/bin/

Usage with ssh

Move or link the tool to /usr/local/bin/tmux-window-renamer and use this ssh config (~/.ssh/config):

Match Host * exec "test $_ = /usr/bin/ssh"
    LocalCommand /usr/local/bin/tmux-window-renamer %h

Now, if you connect to a ssh server, the tmux window gets renamed to the given hostname, until you disconnect from the host.

Test use case

To test if it works, you could also run these commands:

$ echo $$
11305
$ bash --init-file <(echo "/usr/local/bin/tmux-window-renamer MYFANCYNAME")
$ echo $$
11718
$ exit

If you are inside a tmux session, the window gets renamed to MYFANCYNAME while the interactive bash runs.