The default interactive shell is now zsh. What does it mean for you?

After upgrading to Catalina, you may have noticed the Terminal shows a message that the default shell has been switched from using Bash (Bourne-again shell) to zsh (Z shell).

Here is the full message:

The default interactive shell is now zsh.
To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`.
For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050.

You can check what shell you are actually running with the following command:

echo $0

Output:

-bash

This showed me that although the default shell might be Z shell, I’m still using bash in the Terminal. That leaves me with 2 options:

• Keep using bash and suppress the message
• Switch to zsh

Option 1: Suppress the message and keep using bash

• Open bash_profile with nano:

nano ~/.bash_profile

• Add this line in the file:

export BASH_SILENCE_DEPRECATION_WARNING=1

• Save by hitting CTRL X, Y(es) and Enter.
• Close the Terminal
• Open the Terminal

Option 2: Change Terminal shell to zsh

The message in the Terminal tells you to change the shell to zsh with the following command:

chsh -s /bin/zsh

That should do the trick but it did not work on my machine. If you encounter the same problem, read on.

Changing shell to zsh with ‘chsh’ command does not work

If you tried the chsh command and still see the message when opening the Terminal, you can try the following:

• Switch back to the Terminal
• Open the preferences
• Go to the general tab and set the Shells open with setting to Default login shell

Now if you close and open the Terminal, zsh is being used:

echo $0

Output:

-zsh

I hope this helps you to understand what changed in Catalina and how to either suppress the message or change to szh