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A Guide for Upgrading macOS to Catalina and Migrating the Default Shell from Bash to Zsh

Shiono Yoshihide on October 10, 2019

Index From Bash to Zsh Configure Zsh Minimal Configuration Enable Git Completion Define Aliases Prettify the Console with Starshi...

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Davidxswang • Jun 12 '20

Thank you for this post! I met the problem a few days ago that I cannot use auto completion when I was using git, but it worked before. I searched a lot of places but didn't solve this problem perfectly, either prompting warning for me or prompting a lot of errors. Your post just solved it! Thank you!

Stephanie Handsteiner • Oct 10 '19

zsh + ohmyzsh + powerlevel10k >

Alex Patterson • Oct 10 '19

I too am a cat lover, basketball enthusiast, and struggling TypeScript developer 🙀.

Great tutorial!

Pedro Filho • Oct 11 '19

What should I do if I already had zsh+ohmyzsh installed?

Shiono Yoshihide • Oct 11 '19

You can see the current default shell by running the command below:

$ echo ${SHELL}

If the result is /bin/zsh, this is the default macOS shell.

So you need to change it:

$ chsh -s /path/to/your/custom/zsh

And check your default shell has changed by running echo ${SHELL} :)

Jared • Oct 10 '19

How lucky for us who switched to Zsh many moons ago lol

Michael D. Callaghan • Oct 10 '19

Very nice. Thank you.

brando90 • Jan 8 '20

does one not need (the old) .bashrc anymore when using zsh? Everything goes to .zhrc right?

Shiono Yoshihide • Jan 9 '20

If you are using MacOS Catalina from the first, everything goes to zsh. Otherwise if you upgrade OS, we need change the default shell from bash to zsh :)