title (command)

Windows Command Prompt displaying the default title

In computing, title is a command in various command line interpreters (shells) such as the Windows Command Prompt, the Command Processor Shell of Windows Embedded CE and Take Command that changes the title for the graphical terminal emulator window. The command is also used within DFS and ADFS to change the title of the disc in the current drive.

In case of the Windows Command Prompt it is a shell builtin of the command line interpreter cmd.exe. The default window title is defined in the %COMSPEC% environment variable. However, since the Win32 console title can also be defined in the program shortcut, the title is usually set to "Command Prompt". The command is available in Windows 2000 and later.

Although the OS/2 command shell is closely related to the Windows Command Prompt, the title command is not available in the OS/2 version of cmd.exe. The default title of the OS/2 shell window is "OS/2 Window". It can be changed using the start command.

The command also is not available in the Mac OS X Terminal. Instead, the echo command can be used in combination with special escape sequences.

Within the GNU GRUB command processor title is one of several menu-specific commands. It is used to start a new boot entry.

Syntax

title [<String>]

Arguments:

• <String> Specifies the title of the Command Prompt window.

Example

The following batch file changes the title of the Command Prompt window to "Updating files" while the copy command is being executed. After the command is executed, the text "Files updated" is displayed using the echo command, and the title of the Command Prompt window is changed back to "Command Prompt".

@echo off
title Updating files
copy \\server\share\*.txt c:\documents\*.txt
echo Files updated
title Command Prompt

See also

• Win32 console
• Linux console

External links

• Microsoft TechNet Title article