termicon

Set emoji on your terminal tabs automatically — per SSH host, per directory, or as a local default.

🗄️ myserver.example.com          🚨 prod.example.com       💼 ~/work

How it works

termicon.sh is a shell plugin that hooks into your shell. It wraps the ssh command and registers a directory-change hook (PROMPT_COMMAND in bash, chpwd/precmd in zsh). Whenever you change directory or open an SSH connection, it sets the terminal tab title via standard OSC escape sequences — or tmux window names if you're inside tmux.

The termicon CLI manages a plain-text config file at ~/.config/termicon/config.

Install

git clone https://github.com/d43pan/termicon.git
bash termicon/install.sh

Then add to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

source /path/to/termicon/termicon.sh

Dependencies

• bash or zsh (no other requirements)
• fzf (optional) — enables fuzzy emoji search in setup and pick

Quick start

termicon setup

Reads your shell history, shows your most-used SSH hosts and directories, and walks you through assigning an emoji to each one. Includes an emoji search (fuzzy with fzf, keyword without).

Commands

termicon setup

Interactive wizard. Pulls your top SSH hosts and cd destinations from shell history and lets you assign emojis to each. Also prompts for a local default and checks for config conflicts that would cause the title to flicker.

termicon local [emoji]

Set the default emoji shown on local tabs when no directory rule matches.

termicon local        # opens picker
termicon local 🏠     # set directly

termicon add <ssh|dir> <host|path> <emoji>

Add or update a mapping.

termicon add ssh prod.example.com 🚨
termicon add ssh dev.example.com 🧪
termicon add dir ~/work 💼
termicon add dir ~/work/urgent 🔥   # more specific paths take priority

termicon pick <ssh|dir> <host|path>

Open the emoji search for a specific host or directory. Type a keyword to filter (cloud, prod, linux, …), pick a number, or paste any emoji directly.

termicon pick ssh staging.example.com
termicon pick dir ~/projects/myapp

termicon list

Show all configured mappings.

Local default:
  🏠  (all local tabs, no directory rule)

SSH hosts:
  🚨  prod.example.com
  🧪  dev.example.com

Directories:
  💼  ~/work
  🔥  ~/work/urgent

termicon remove <ssh|dir> <host|path>

Remove a mapping.

termicon remove ssh dev.example.com
termicon remove dir ~/work

termicon edit

Open the config file directly in $EDITOR.

Config file

~/.config/termicon/config is a plain text file — one rule per line.

local 🏠
ssh:prod.example.com 🚨
ssh:dev.example.com 🧪
dir:/home/user/work 💼
dir:/home/user/work/urgent 🔥

Directory matching uses longest-prefix: if both ~/work and ~/work/urgent are configured and you're in ~/work/urgent/src, the more specific rule (~/work/urgent) wins.

SSH host matching strips user@ prefixes and :port suffixes, so ssh user@host -p 2222 matches the rule for host.

Title priority

1. SSH host emoji — set when an SSH connection opens, restored when it exits
2. Directory emoji — most specific matching prefix
3. Local default — fallback for all other local tabs
4. Directory name — bare basename $PWD if nothing is configured

Remote servers

When you SSH into a server, the remote shell's own .bashrc can overwrite the emoji title on the first prompt — the same PS1 conflict as the local fix above, but on the remote side.

Use termicon remote to check and fix it:

termicon remote myserver.example.com

Checking myserver.example.com for terminal title conflicts...

⚠️  Conflict on myserver.example.com — the remote shell will overwrite '🗄️ myserver.example.com' on every prompt.

   /home/user/.bashrc  line 71:  PS1="\[\e]0;...\u@\h: \w\a\]$PS1"

Fix — run this on myserver.example.com:
   sed -i '71s/^/# /' /home/user/.bashrc

Apply automatically via SSH? Creates .termicon.bak backups. [y/N]

Choosing y SSHes in, backs up the file, and comments out the offending line. Choosing n leaves the server untouched and just prints the sed command to run manually.

Conflict: emoji flickers and disappears

If you see the emoji appear and then immediately vanish, another tool is overwriting the terminal title after termicon sets it. The most common cause is the default Ubuntu/Debian .bashrc, which embeds a title in PS1:

# This line in ~/.bashrc will overwrite termicon on every prompt:
PS1="\[\e]0;\u@\h: \w\a\]$PS1"

termicon setup detects this automatically and tells you which file and line to fix. The fix is to comment out that line — termicon handles title setting via PROMPT_COMMAND instead.