How to set my default shell on Mac?

Post author By user user
Post date July 7, 2021
Categories In fish, macos, terminal
18 Comments on How to set my default shell on Mac?

I do not like to retype fish every time I start terminal. I want fish on by default. How can I set fish shell as my default shell on a Mac?

18 thoughts on “How to set my default shell on Mac?”

user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

Mac OS X: How to change the Terminal shell

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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

the chsh program will let you change your default shell. It will want the full path to the executable, so if your shell is fish then it will want you to provide the output given when you type which fish.

You’ll see a line starting with “Shell:“. If you’ve never edited it, it most likely says “Shell: /bin/bash“. Replace that /bin/bash path with the path to your desired shell.

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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

heimdall:~ leeg$ dscl
Entering interactive mode... (type "help" for commands)
 > cd /Local/Default/Users/
/Local/Default/Users > read <<YOUR_USER>>
[...]
UserShell: /bin/bash
/Local/Default/Users >

just change that value (with the write command in dscl).

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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
You can use chsh to change a user’s shell.

Run the following code, for instance, to change your shell to Zsh
```
chsh -s /bin/zsh
```
As described in the manpage, and by Lorin, if the shell is not known by the OS, you have to add it to its known list: /etc/shells.
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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

When in the terminal, open the terminal preferences using Command+,.

On the Setting Tab, select one of the themes, and choose the shell tab on the right.

You can set the autostart command fish.

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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
Here’s another way to do it:

Assuming you installed it with MacPorts, which can be done by doing:
```
sudo port install fish
```
Your shell will be located in /opt/local/bin/fish.

You need to tell OSX that this is a valid shell. To do that, add this path to the end of the /etc/shells file.

Once you’ve done this, you can change the shell by going to System Preferences -> Accounts. Click on the Lock to allow changes. Right-click on the account, and choose “Advanced Options…”. In the “Login shell” field, add the path to fish.
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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

Homebrew on M1 macs should use /opt/homebrew instead of /usr/local.

You can check the fish location which fish. For me the fish was in /opt/homebrew/bin/fish which was the location I have added to etc/shells

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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
edit .zshrc and change it to

exec /bin/bash

or to whatever shell you might prefer.
Bonus: this doesn’t require root access and will work on every version of osx.

The only problem is that it doesn’t read .bash_profile this way; it is only read if bash is run as an interactive login shell, you would have to include it from .bashrc with something like this:
```
if [[ "$OSTYPE" == "darwin"* ]]; then
    #local hack on osx.
    if [[ -f $HOME/.bash_profile ]]; then
      . $HOME/.bash_profile
    fi
fi
```
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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
To change your default shell on mac run the following:
```
chsh -s <name-of-shell>
```
List of shells you can choose from are:
1. /bin/bash
2. /bin/csh
3. /bin/dash
4. /bin/ksh
5. /bin/sh
6. /bin/tcsh
7. /bin/zsh
so if you want to change from to the /bin/zsh shell, your command will look like:
```
chsh -s /bin/zsh
```
you can see all the available shells on your system by running:
```
cat /etc/shells
```
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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
This work for me on fresh install of mac osx (sierra):
1. Define current user as owner of shells
```
sudo chown $(whoami) /etc/shells
```
1. Add Fish to /etc/shells
```
sudo echo /usr/local/bin/fish >> /etc/shells
```
1. Make Fish your default shell with chsh
```
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish
```
1. Redefine root as owner of shells
```
sudo chown root /etc/shells
```
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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
On macOS Mojave I had to do the following (using zsh as an example):
```
brew install zsh
sudo sh -c "echo $(which zsh) >> /etc/shells"
chsh -s $(which zsh)
```
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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
In case you are having troubles with the other ways, worked on mac Mojave but should generally work.
```
which fish
```
add the output path to “System Preferences > Users & Groups > right click user, Advanced Options” Paste the result from which into “Login shell:”
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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

How to get the latest version of bash on modern macOS (tested on Mojave).

brew install bash
which bash | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
chsh -s $(which bash)

Then you are ready to get vim style tab completion which is only available on bash>=4 (current version in brew is 5.0.2

# If there are multiple matches for completion, Tab should cycle through them
bind 'TAB':menu-complete

# Display a list of the matching files
bind "set show-all-if-ambiguous on"

# Perform partial completion on the first Tab press,
# only start cycling full results on the second Tab press
bind "set menu-complete-display-prefix on"

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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
These are applicable to MacOS Sierra 10.12.5 (16F73) and probably some other recent and upcoming versions of MacOS.
1. chsh is not enough to change the default shell. Make sure you press Command+, while your terminal is open and change the ‘Shells open with’ option to ‘Default login shell.’
2. In case of bash, make sure that you execute echo $BASH_VERSION to confirm you are running the intended version of bash. bash --version does not give you correct information.
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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
Terminal.app > Preferences > General > Shells open with: > /bin/fish
1. Open your terminal and press command+, (comma). This will open a preferences window.
2. The first tab is ‘General’.
3. Find ‘Shells open with’ setting and choose 2nd option which needs complete path to the shell.
4. Paste the link to your fish command, which generally is /usr/local/bin/fish.
See this screenshot where zsh is being set as default.

I am using macOS Sierra. Also works in macOS Mojave.
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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

1. sudo nano /etc/shells

2. add /usr/local/bin/fish to your list of shells

3. chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish

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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
From Terminal:
1. Add Fish to /etc/shells, which will require an administrative password:
```
sudo echo /usr/local/bin/fish >> /etc/shells
```
2. Make Fish your default shell with chsh:
```
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish
```
From System Preferences:
1. User and Groups → ctrl-click on Current User → Advanced Options…
2. Change Login shell to /usr/local/bin/fish
3. Press OK, log out and in again
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user November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
The only thing that worked for me was a combination of all these methods.
1. First I had to add fish to the /etc/shells file
2. Then I ran chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish
3. Finally, I typed Command+, and added /usr/local/bin/fish to the default path there
Only after I had done all three things did fish start popping up as the default for new terminal windows.
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