titlebar and titletip shows "None" on local shells.

Normally the title would be emitted by your shell. Could you let me know what the output of the following commands is please?

echo $TERM
echo $PROMPT_COMMAND

The output from each command is:

jason@Kryten:~$ echo $TERM
xterm
jason@Kryten:~$ echo $PROMPT_COMMAND

jason@Kryten:~$

> jason@Kryten:~$ echo $PROMPT_COMMAND
>

Assuming you are running bash, then this is the issue. The title is set by the shell via an escape sequence, which is usually part of $PROMPT_COMMAND. For example:

cmsj@kodachi:~$ grep PROMPT_COMMAND .bashrc
    PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"'

I have a pretty standard Ubuntu install and I have just added the terminator PPA and installed Terminator. I have added PROMPT_COMMAND to my .bashrc and it is now working as expected. Thank you.

converting to a question as this might affect other users that do not have a PROMPT_COMMAND set in the environment (fresh install of archlinux....)

The titlebar is dependant on the environment variable PROMPT_COMMAND.
If this variable is not set, The titlebar will display "None".
To fix this, one must add the following to ~/.bashrc

# If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir
case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
    PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"'
    ;;
*)
    ;;
esac

The titlebar is dependant on the environment variable PROMPT_COMMAND.
If this variable is not set, The titlebar will display "None".
This issue might happen on freshly installed distro that comes with an almost empty ~/.bashrc

To fix this, one must add the following to ~/.bashrc

# If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir
case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
    PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"'
    ;;
*)
    ;;
esac

FAQ #494: “titlebar and titletip shows “None"".

and what if i wanna do it in zsh?

Muhammad: I'm not familiar with zsh, but I'm sure googling for how to set the terminal title with zsh will yield some enlightenment :)

for zsh:

case $TERM in
    xterm*)
        precmd () {print -Pn "\e]0;%n@%m: %~\a"}
        ;;
esac