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default interactive shell to zsh?

I am using using macOS Big Sur; How to change my default interactive shell to "zsh"?

MacBook Air

Posted on Mar 24, 2021 9:46 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 24, 2021 10:39 AM

If you got a message, copy the command and paste it into Terminal. Hit return.

If not, here are the instructions: Use zsh as the default shell on your Mac - Apple Support

2 replies

Mar 24, 2021 12:21 PM in response to jac-G

After you have Zsh configured as your default shell, it does not read the old Bash dotfiles to configure your PATH or other environment variables. The shell Terminal prompt syntax is different from Bash too.


Copy and paste this at your Zsh shell prompt, and then press return to create a Zsh dot file named ~/.zshrc:


<<"EOF" > ~/.zshrc
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:${PATH}"
PS1="%m: %~ %% "
EOF


Then issue this command at the Zsh shell prompt to set the individual PATH and shell prompt as shown above:


source ~/.zshrc


These will now be set every time that you launch the Terminal with the Zsh shell as your default shell. You can edit the ~/.zshrc file in a plain text editor to add additional Zsh shell-related settings.


You can access the latest Zsh manual from here, and the multi-part UNIX man page for zsh is:


man zsh


default interactive shell to zsh?

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