How to access the MySQL CLI With MAMP

First, you’ve to start MAMP or MAMP PRO, and you open your terminal and type:

/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql -uroot -p

Enter the password, by default the password, is root:

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 254
Server version: 5.6.35 MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2016, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql>

If you want to use the command mysql by default without typing the entire command line you can edit one of these dot files ~./bashrc if you’re using bash or ~/.zshrc in case of using zsh and add this alias:

alias mysql=/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql

After editing the file using Vim or Nano editor save the dot file, and run the source to validate the modification.

If you're using use zsh:

source ~/.zshrc

If you're using bash:

source ~/.bashrc

Now you can run the command mysql from the terminal and enter the username and the password:

mysql -uroot -proot

Comments

[senh lee]

It appears your information is valid for MAMP only, not MAMP PRO. Would you like to verify that ! I still couldn't get to MAMP PRO MySql.

[Jacob]

That's true, MAMP PRO is stored in '~/' folder as MAMP folder
so should open it by

cd ~/MAMP/bin/ && mysql -uroot -p

[Fov Zem]

I have MAMP Pro on Ventura (though I started with just MAMP back on Catalina but upgraded within weeks), and my ~/MAMP PRO directory doesn't have a bin directory.

I do have a /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql file, so I don't know why @senhleeiclee's path is different. Did macOS or MAMP Pro change somehow? Or do the paths depend on when you install/upgrade? This seems like such a mess 😆 that shouldn't exist in the first place. Silly users wanting consistent sensible file paths.

[Fov Zem]

Would be nice to know which version of MAMP Pro and macOS you wrote the article for. Apple likes changing file paths all the time for no apparent reason, so some of these just aren't applicable. My MAMP Pro is version 6.8, and my macOS is Ventura 13.2.1.

From everything I've determined (even going back to Catalina, .zshrc is not where alias should go, it should go into .profile. Maybe things were different in Mojave. As of macOS 10.6 Catalina and its successor Big Sur, Apple has made the zsh shell the default shell, previously it was the bash shell. Maybe you were using something different. Considering this article was posted in September of 2019, looks like you were on Mojave. My Mac started with Catalina, and has had Big Sur and Monterey previous to now.

It may be valuable for you and others to see the result of cat on different shell config files in my ~:

.bashrc: file doesn't exist
.bash_profile: source ~/.profile (that's it)
.zprofile: emulate sh \ source ~/.profile \ emulate zsh (interesting)
.zshrc: a bunch of export lines, mostly for PATH

Note that the only file I modified was .profile, just to add aliases. I don't remember where I got that recommendation (this was years ago), but it still seems to be the most correct nowadays.

If you experience is different, please state how, and which versions you're using.