Interest Check: Per-Window Labels/Titles Visible in Splits

[mcrmck]

When using the Splits layout with several windows in a single tab, it can be hard to tell at a glance which window is which -- especially when they're running similar-looking commands or output.

Both terminator (by default) and tmux with (pane-border-format) show a small label on each pane with its title or running process. I find this really helpful for orientation when I have 4+ splits open.

Kitty has tab_title_template for tabs, and window_title exists as a concept, but there doesn't seem to be a way to display a visible label on each window with a split layout.

Has anyone found a good workaround for this? And is there a broader interest in something like this as a feature -- maybe a window_title_template rendered at the top/bottom of each window in split layouts?

Curious if others run into this or if there is broader interest in implementing.

[kovidgoyal]

You can see per window titles in kitty but only when using the focus_visible_window action https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/actions/#action-focus_visible_window In this case the window title is drawn on top of the top line of each split. Showing window titles above each split would require dedicating space for them, which IMO is not a very good tradeoff. The most common need to identify windows is when switching between them, which focus_visible_window takes care of. That said having it be option, defaulting to off is fine by me, in principle.

[mcrmck]

Thanks for the feedback @kovidgoyal . I went ahead and implemented this as an opt-in feature. Pr is up at #9450 .

It adds a pane_title_bar option (none/top/bottom, default is none) that renders a colored title bar above or below each pane when multiple windows are visible in a tab. It reuses the same GPU rendering model as the tab bar (virtual Screen` objects per window) and hides automatically when only a single window is showing.

Also includes options for colors, text alignment, and templates using the same syntax as tab_title_template. Happy to adjust the approach based on any feedback.