Change iterm backgrounds when you SSH into different terminals

Oh my zsh! is awesome.

This is my favourite oh my zsh trick. All too often, you almost type the command in the wrong window. This can be disastrous when working with different environments.

I want to change the background of my terminal whenever I ssh into production machines.

With oh my zsh you can create a file called ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/iterm2-ssh.zsh like so:

function tabc() {
  NAME=$1; if [ -z "$NAME" ]; then NAME="Default"; fi
  # if you have trouble with this, change
  # "Default" to the name of your default theme
  echo -e "\033]50;SetProfile=$NAME\a"
}

function tab-reset() {
    NAME="Default"
    echo -e "\033]50;SetProfile=$NAME\a"
}

function colorssh() {
    if [[ -n "$ITERM_SESSION_ID" ]]; then
        trap "tab-reset" INT EXIT
        if [[ $* == dev* ]]; then
            tabc Dev
        elif [[ $* == stg* ]]; then
            tabc Stage
        elif [[ $* == beta* ]]; then
            tabc Beta
        elif [[ $* == prod* ]]; then
            tabc Prod
        else
            tabc Default
        fi
    fi
    ssh $*
}
compdef _ssh tabc=ssh

alias ssh="colorssh"

Here Dev, Beta, Stage, Prod are different environments.

I have corresponding themes created in my iterm.

Basically the ssh command is aliased to a shell function called colorssh which changes the theme based on whichever environment I ssh to. Not my invention, this trick. I read it somewhere but I have been using this for ages.