How do I make a new tab inherit the current shell's working directory?

Have the shell emit \x1b]7;file://hostname/absolute/path\x07 on every chpwd / PROMPT_COMMAND. iTerm2, gnome-terminal, Konsole, kitty, ghostty, wezterm, and Windows Terminal all read OSC 7 and use it as the cwd for new tabs / splits. Zsh's vcs_info style and starship emit it automatically; bash needs PROMPT_COMMAND='printf "\033]7;file://%s%s\007" "$HOSTNAME" "$PWD"'. Fish emits it natively since 3.0.

Why must the path be URL-encoded with file:// instead of a bare path?

OSC 7 was specified by GNOME / freedesktop to carry a URI, not a path string — so it can identify the *host* (for SSH / multiplex scenarios where the terminal and the shell are on different machines) and round-trip non-ASCII / space characters losslessly. Send file://$HOSTNAME$PWD with $PWD percent-encoded. Terminals strip the URI prefix and resolve $PWD locally if the hostname matches their own; otherwise they fall back to the user's home directory.

OSC 7 — Current working directory hint

Tell the terminal which directory the shell is in — used for tab labels, 'new tab here', and remote-aware split-pane workflows.

Byte forms

Every common string-literal form so you can paste-and-search either direction.

\\x1b[\x1b]7;file://HOST/PATH\x07

\\033[\033]7;file://HOST/PATH\007

\\e[\e]7;file://HOST/PATH\a

ESC [ESC ] 7 ; URL BEL

hex1b 5d 37 3b ... 07

Description

Tell the terminal the shell's current working directory as a file://HOST/PATH URL. Adopted by iTerm2, Windows Terminal, kitty, wezterm, ghostty, Konsole, and VTE-based terminals (gnome-terminal, foot). The terminal uses this for: (a) tab / pane labels that show the basename of the directory, (b) the Cmd-T/new tab here action that spawns a new shell in the same cwd, (c) tmux resurrect / wezterm mux recovery that restores split panes to the right directory after a session crash. The shell emits this on every prompt — bash via PROMPT_COMMAND, zsh via precmd or chpwd, fish has __fish_cwd_osc built in. The hostname matters over SSH: the terminal can refuse to reopen a tab on the remote host since it would have to ssh again.

Spec citation: iTerm2 Proprietary Escape Codes (OSC 7) / VTE / kitty

Examples

bash

# Emit on every prompt — bash 5+\nPROMPT_COMMAND='printf "\033]7;file://%s%s\007" "$HOSTNAME" "$PWD"'

python

import os, socket, sys; sys.stdout.write(f'\x1b]7;file://{socket.gethostname()}{os.getcwd()}\x07')

host, _ := os.Hostname(); wd, _ := os.Getwd(); fmt.Printf("\x1b]7;file://%s%s\x07", host, wd)

javascript

import os from 'node:os'; process.stdout.write(`\x1b]7;file://${os.hostname()}${process.cwd()}\x07`)

char host[256]; gethostname(host, sizeof host); printf("\x1b]7;file://%s%s\x07", host, getcwd(NULL, 0));

Used in

Real-world tools that emit this sequence — anchors the bytes to commands you've already used.

zsh, fish, bash `__vte_prompt_command`shells emit `\x1b]7;file://hostname/abs/path\x07` from the chpwd / PROMPT_COMMAND hook so the host terminal can record cwd per shell-pane and pass it to new-tab / new-window actions
tmux `update-environment`, new-window -ctmux reads the OSC 7 payload from the active pane to seed `new-window` / `split-window` cwd — `tmux new-window` opens in the current shell's directory, not tmux's start directory
iTerm2, Terminal.app new-tab inheritanceCmd-T in iTerm2 / macOS Terminal opens the new tab at the previous tab's last reported OSC 7 cwd — break this by disabling shell_integration and the new tab falls back to `$HOME`
GNOME Terminal, Konsole, WezTerm pane-split cwdGTK / KDE / WezTerm terminals all consume OSC 7 to keep `Split Right` / `Split Down` / `Duplicate Tab` opening at the source pane's directory — the URI must be `file://host/...`, a bare path is rejected silently
VS Code integrated terminal `Open in External Terminal`VS Code reads the most recent OSC 7 from each terminal panel so the `Terminal: Open in External Terminal` command launches the system terminal at the integrated shell's cwd instead of the workspace root

Frequently asked

Short answers to the questions developers actually search for this sequence.

How do I make a new tab inherit the current shell's working directory?: Have the shell emit \x1b]7;file://hostname/absolute/path\x07 on every chpwd / PROMPT_COMMAND. iTerm2, gnome-terminal, Konsole, kitty, ghostty, wezterm, and Windows Terminal all read OSC 7 and use it as the cwd for new tabs / splits. Zsh's vcs_info style and starship emit it automatically; bash needs PROMPT_COMMAND='printf "\033]7;file://%s%s\007" "$HOSTNAME" "$PWD"'. Fish emits it natively since 3.0.
Why must the path be URL-encoded with file:// instead of a bare path?: OSC 7 was specified by GNOME / freedesktop to carry a URI, not a path string — so it can identify the *host* (for SSH / multiplex scenarios where the terminal and the shell are on different machines) and round-trip non-ASCII / space characters losslessly. Send file://$HOSTNAME$PWD with $PWD percent-encoded. Terminals strip the URI prefix and resolve $PWD locally if the hostname matches their own; otherwise they fall back to the user's home directory.

Common typos / look-alikes

Wrong forms developers commonly paste from Stack Overflow that look right but aren't — with the canonical correction inline.

\x1b]7;/Users/jane/src\x07 (raw path, no scheme)\x1b]7;file:///Users/jane/src\x07 (note the *three* slashes — file:// + empty host + absolute path)
OSC 7 expects a file://HOST/PATH URL, not a raw filesystem path. Without the file:// scheme, iTerm2 / Windows Terminal / kitty / wezterm / Ghostty silently ignore the sequence — "Cmd-T new tab here" lands in $HOME instead of your current directory. Local case has an empty host (so file:// + /Users/... = three slashes after file:). The canonical bash one-liner is PROMPT_COMMAND='printf "\033]7;file://%s%s\007" "$HOSTNAME" "$PWD"'. Apple Terminal.app's lone-2-slash tolerance is non-standard and not portable.
\x1b]7;file://$HOSTNAME/path with spaces/file\x07 (raw spaces in path)\x1b]7;file://$HOSTNAME/path%20with%20spaces/file\x07 (percent-encode reserved chars per RFC 3986)
OSC 7 payloads are URLs and must be percent-encoded per RFC 3986. Raw spaces, #, ?, %, non-ASCII bytes break the URL parser inside the terminal — kitty silently drops the sequence, iTerm2 logs a Bogus URL: ... warning, wezterm sets the tab title to the malformed string. The portable encoder is python3 -c 'import urllib.parse,os; print(urllib.parse.quote(os.getcwd()))' or zsh's ${(j::):-${(@s:/:)PWD//(#m)[^A-Za-z0-9_.~\/-]/%${(l:2::0:)$(([##16]#MATCH))}}}. The OSC 7 spec is file:// URL → must be a *valid* URL — "the terminal will figure it out" is a recipe for silent breakage on paths with Unicode filenames.
emit OSC 7 as \x1b]7;file://%s%s\x1b\\ over SSH from localhost as the hostname ($HOSTNAME unset / hostname returns localhost.localdomain)use the SSH-reachable name: printf '\033]7;file://%s%s\007' "$(hostname -f)" "$PWD" or set $HOSTNAME to the public name in ~/.ssh/rc
The hostname field is how iTerm2 / Windows Terminal / wezterm decide whether "Cmd-T new tab here" can open a local shell at the same path or must SSH back to the remote host. If you emit localhost from an SSH session, the terminal believes the cwd is on the local box and opens a useless local shell at a path that doesn't exist; if you emit nothing (empty host, file:///path), the terminal opens a local shell at that path even when you're on a remote box. The fix is to always emit the SSH-reachable FQDN: $(hostname -f) on Linux, scutil --get HostName on macOS, or hard-code it in ~/.bashrc / ~/.zshrc per host. tmux's pass through OSC 7 requires the same care — tmux running on the remote, ssh into it, your laptop's iTerm2 sees the remote hostname and routes correctly.

Terminal support

xterm: no
Linux console (fbcon): no
macOS Terminal.app: partial
iTerm2: yes
Windows Terminal: yes
cmd.exe / ConPTY: no
kitty: yes
alacritty: partial
WezTerm: yes
Ghostty: yes
GNOME Terminal: yes
Konsole: yes
tmux: partial
GNU screen: no

xterm	Linux console (fbcon)	macOS Terminal.app	iTerm2	Windows Terminal	cmd.exe / ConPTY	kitty	alacritty	WezTerm	Ghostty	GNOME Terminal	Konsole	tmux	GNU screen
no	no	partial	yes	yes	no	yes	partial	yes	yes	yes	yes	partial	no

Related sequences

In the family cookbook

OSC cookbook · 5. Shell prompt marks — `OSC 133` (FinalTerm A / B / C / D)