Ubuntu – GNU screen status bar – how to make it display shell session names

I turn off the status bar, myself, because that's not a pratical way to manage screen with 40+ windows. Using Ctrl-A + " will open a list of all screens. You can name individual windows with Ctrl-A + A. I also use a customized .screenrc that, among other things, shows the Shell Title message in the Window listing.

# terminfo and termcap for nice 256 color terminal
# allow bold colors - necessary for some reason
attrcolor b ".I"
# tell screen how to set colors. AB = background, AF=foreground
#termcapinfo xterm 'ti=\E[?1049h:te=\E[?1049l'
#termcapinfo xterm 'Co#256:AB=\E[48;5;%dm:AF=\E[38;5;%dm:hs:ts=\E]2;:fs=\007:ds=\E]2;screen\007'
termcapinfo xterm* 'Co#256:AB=\E[48;5;%dm:AF=\E[38;5;%dm:hs:ts=\E]2;:fs=\007:ds=\E]2;screen\007:ti=\E[?1049h:te=\E[?1049l:XT'
termcapinfo screen* 'Co#256:AB=\E[48;5;%dm:AF=\E[38;5;%dm:hs:ts=\E]2;:fs=\E\\:ds=\E]2;screen\E\\:ti=\E[?1049h:te=\E[?1049l:XT'
# erase background with current bg color
defbce "on"
altscreen on
#hardstatus on
defscrollback 2000
multiuser on

hardstatus string "[%n%?: %t%?] %h"
windowlist string "%3n %t   %h%=%f"

For zsh:

Put this in your ~/.zsh

[centos@centos ~]$ cat .zsh
if [[ ${TERM} == "screen-bce" || ${TERM} == "screen" ]]; then
  precmd () { print -Pn "\033k\033\134\033k%m[%1d]\033\134" }
  preexec () { print -Pn "\033k\033\134\033k%m[$1]\033\134" }
else
  precmd () { print -Pn "\e]0;%n@%m: %~\a" }
  preexec () { print -Pn "\e]0;%n@%m: $1\a" }
fi
PS1=$'%{\e[0;32m%}%m%{\e[0m%}:%~> '
export PS1
[centos@centos ~]$ 

In your ~/.screenrc

hardstatus string "%h"
caption always "%{= kw} %-w%{= wk}%n*%t%{-}%+w%{= kw} %=%d %M %0c %{g}%H%{-}"