Mac OS X: How to change the Terminal shell

Important: This is an advanced topic. You should use this information only if you are comfortable using Terminal and understand the concept of shells.

The default shell (or command-line interface) used in Mac OS X 10.0 through 10.2.8 is tcsh (with 10.3 and 10.4 it's bash). With Mac OS X 10.2 or later, other interactive shells are included, such as bash and zsh.

To temporarily change your shell, type the name of the shell, such as: bash

To revert to the tcsh shell, close the Terminal window and open a new one.

To permanently change your default Terminal shell:

1. Choose Preferences from the Terminal menu.

2. Select the option "Execute this command (specify complete path):"

3. Change the selected text entry from /bin/tcsh to reflect a different Terminal shell, such as:

   /bin/bash
   /bin/csh
   /bin/zsh
   /bin/zsh-4.0.4 (Mac OS X 10.2.8 or earlier)
   /bin/zsh-4.1.1 (Mac OS X 10.3 or later)
   /bin/ksh (Mac OS X 10.4 or later)

4. Close the Terminal Preferences window.

5. Quit and open Terminal again. The first and subsequent new Terminal windows open with the shell that you designated in Preferences.

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