Instance-based window titles

[God-damnit-all]

Summary of the new feature

Currently, if you change the window title via $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle, that change is persistent and will remain that way even after a script complete and, in cases where another shell started PowerShell, even after PowerShell is closed.

It would be better if there was a way to change the window title that only lasted until the end of the environment that the window title change was invoked.

Proposed implementation

I think it would make the most sense to tie this to an automatic variable - let's say $PSWindowTitle. It would start off as $null. If a function invoked a window title change, it would last only until the end of the function unless the variable was set through the global scope, e.g. $global:PSWindowTitle, then it would last until the end of the environment that called the function.

$Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle would still be an option and would function the same way it currently does, but $PSWindowTitle overrides it whenever $PSWindowTitle is not $null.

This implementation also has the bonus of being backward-compatible in the sense that if this variable is changed by an older version of PowerShell without this feature, nothing happens, rather than something breaking.

[God-damnit-all]

By the way, I know that this can already be accomplished through the use of things like backing up the window title before a try-catch block and restoring it in the finally block, or, in a function, backing it up in the begin block and restoring it through the clean block, but I just think this is a far more intuitive and convenient approach.

[237dmitry]

You can add changing title in prompt function. And title will be changed every iteration.

[God-damnit-all]

You can add changing title in prompt function. And title will be changed every iteration.

Sure, that's another thing you could do for the same functionality, but it's not really convenient or intuitive.

[doctordns]

In my experience, when a function/script changes a title bar, it's short-lived. In my $Profile, I set this value to indicate the user I am logged in as and whether it;'s an administrative console. So I can just run the profile again or just start a new session.

Not sure this is needed.

[jhoneill]

In my experience, when a function/script changes a title bar, it's short-lived. In my $Profile, I set this value to indicate the user I am logged in as and whether it;'s an administrative console. So I can just run the profile again or just start a new session.

Not sure this is needed.

Ditto.
As described this change would mean we set a preference variable, which then over-rides existing well behaved scripts which change $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle and set it back the original , in order to deal with badly behaved scripts which change the title.

that change is persistent and will remain that way even after a script complete and, in cases where another shell started PowerShell, even after PowerShell is closed.

That's not what I find. My profile has this

$Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = 'PS {0}.{1} {2}' -f $PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Major,
                                                   $PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Minor,
                                                   $PSVersionTable.PSVersion.PreReleaseLabel
 if  ([System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent(
              ).Groups.Value -contains "S-1-5-32-544") {
              $env:isadmin = $true
             $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = "ADMIN: " + $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle
      }

If I run PowerShell.exe or pwsh.exe from cmd.exe the title changes while PowerShell runs and reverts to "command prompt" when it it exits.

[God-damnit-all]

Well, not sure what I'm doing different, but I'll be closing this issue then.