set_window_title doesn't set window title

[NichtElias]

I was trying to set the window title of the terminal my app runs in, and found this discussion. I tried the example given there and the window title stays unchanged.

The issue seems to be textual specific, as the following snippets work as expected:

import sys, time

sys.stderr.write("\x1B]0;Hello\x07")
sys.stderr.flush()
time.sleep(2)

from rich import console
import time

c = console.Console()
c.set_window_title("Test")
time.sleep(2)

I'm running xfce4-terminal. No idea why that doesn't show in the diagnostics. Trying with xterm I get the same results.

Textual Diagnostics

Versions

Name	Value
Textual	8.1.1
Rich	14.3.3

Python

Name	Value
Version	3.14.3
Implementation	CPython
Compiler	GCC 15.2.1 20260209
Executable	/home/elias/projects/polay12/.venv/bin/python

Operating System

Name	Value
System	Linux
Release	6.19.8-arch1-1
Version	#1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sat, 14 Mar 2026 01:07:43 +0000

Terminal

Name	Value
Terminal Application	Unknown
TERM	xterm-256color
COLORTERM	truecolor
FORCE_COLOR	Not set
NO_COLOR	Not set

Rich Console options

Name	Value
size	width=113, height=25
legacy_windows	False
min_width	1
max_width	113
is_terminal	True
encoding	utf-8
max_height	25
justify	None
overflow	None
no_wrap	False
highlight	None
markup	None
height	None

[github-actions]

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• Why do some key combinations never make it to my app?

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[TomJGooding]

I expect quite a lot has changed in Textual since that discussion in 2023!

I managed to create a working example but probably not recommended as it involves some private internals:

from rich.control import Control

from textual.app import App, ComposeResult
from textual.widgets import Input


class SetTitleApp(App):
    def compose(self) -> ComposeResult:
        yield Input(placeholder="Set the terminal title here")

    def on_input_changed(self, event: Input.Changed) -> None:
        title_sequence = Control.title(event.value).segment.text
        if self._driver is not None:
            self._driver.write(title_sequence)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    SetTitleApp().run()

[cfbolz]

FWIW, I've just bisected this, and the demo app stopped changing the terminal title after commit c249548

[cfbolz]

and, looking around a bit, the same commit broke App.bell. the console from then point on was using a _NullFile(), therefore the bell write also never made it to the actual terminal.