Several windows from the same terminal app look alike until you click into each one. Your terminal may already have the fix: Apple Terminal, iTerm2 and Windows Terminal can give a window or tab its own title and colors, iTerm2 adds badges, and tmux names its windows and panes. Those settings work inside one app. Terminal Tags works on the window itself, in any app: press Ctrl+Shift+`, click a window and name it, then pick its tag from the menu bar or tray to bring it to the front.
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Start with what your terminal already does
If your windows all belong to one terminal app, its own settings may be enough. Each set of steps below follows that app's documentation.
Apple Terminal (Mac)
Edit the title: press Shift-Command-I and type a name.
Edit the background color: press Option-Command-I and pick a color.
Reuse a look: choose Terminal > Settings, click Profiles, select one (or create one), and set its colors in Text, its window title in Window and its tab title in Tab. To open a window with it, choose Shell > New Window, then pick it from the list at the end of the menu.
Rename a tab: right-click it, choose Rename Tab and type the new title.
Color a tab: right-click it, choose Color… and pick a color, or choose Custom… for any color.
For a name and color that every new tab of a profile starts with, set tabTitle, tabColor and suppressApplicationTitle (to true, so the shell doesn't replace the title) in its settings.
Name a window: press Ctrl-b, then comma, and type a name. tmux renames the window you're in (the rename-window command), shows the new name in the window list on the status line, and stops renaming that window by itself.
Title a pane: press Ctrl-b, then colon, and enter select-pane -T followed by a title. By default, the right side of the status line shows the pane title in quotes.
To give every pane a title line on its border, the tmux wiki's example sets pane-border-status to top and uses pane-border-format to show the pane title.
A tab color or tab title lives in one terminal app's tab bar, and you set it up app by app. A Terminal Tags tag sits on the top edge of the window itself, in any app, and every tag is listed in the menu bar or tray, where picking one brings its window to the front.
Several windows from one app. Running ten terminals at once? Tag each one and the whole desktop reads at a glance.
Windows from different apps. Any app window, not just terminals: your terminal, your editor, your browser.
Mac, Windows and Linux. One purchase unlocks Terminal Tags on all three, and on each the hotkey starts as Ctrl+Shift+`.
One list to get back. Every tag is listed in the menu bar on a Mac and in the tray on Windows and Linux. Pick one and its window comes to the front, even if it was minimized.
How to tag a window
Press Ctrl+Shift+` (or choose Tag a Window in Terminal Tags).
Click the window you want to label.
Type a name. Click the color dot to change the color.
Jump back to it
Open the Terminal Tags menu in the menu bar (Mac) or the tray (Windows and Linux).
Pick the tag by its color and name.
Its window comes to the front.
To make tags your own, open Settings from the menu bar or tray: edit the colors, pick Pill, Rounded or Square, choose a font, and turn on Big tags to read them from across the room.
Where the line is
Terminal Tags shows the name you give a window, not what's running in it. It doesn't start, split or save sessions, and it never reads the text inside a window.
A tag lasts as long as its window. Close the window, quit Terminal Tags or restart, and you tag again. Turn on Launch at login in Settings so Terminal Tags is running whenever you sign in.
On Linux, Terminal Tags tags windows on an X11 desktop. On a Wayland session, native Wayland windows can't be tagged.
On a Mac, it asks for Accessibility so it can bring a tagged window to the front; Screen Recording is optional. Windows and Linux ask for nothing.
One job, done cleanly.
Install it, sign in, and tag your first window before you pay anything. Then try everything free for 24 hours with no card, or buy it once for $19.99.