Update ZSH on MacOS

CY
1 min readDec 8, 2020

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On my Mackbook Air the default zsh is:

# use `zsh --version` to get this
zsh 5.3 (x86_64-apple-darwin18.0)

I installed the newer version from Homebrew:

brew install zsh

Although, Homebrew installed the newer version (which is 5.8), when I checked it, it was still 5.3.

Then, I tried the next steps.

First, found the location of zsh:

$ which zsh
/usr/local/bin/zsh

Second, found out what’s the shell I was using:

$ dscl . -read /Users/<username> UserShell
UserShell: /bin/bash

The . is short for localhost, the <username> expands to my username on the Mac.

Third, I added the zsh’s location to the shell file and changed the shell:

$ sudo vim /etc/shells
# add `/usr/local/bin/zsh` at the bottom in it
# use the next command line to change shell
$ chsh -s /usr/local/bin/zsh
# confirm whether it has changed
$ dscl . -read /Users/<username> UserShell
UserShell: /usr/local/bin/zsh

Yes. It has changed! Now I typed zsh --version it showed the new one:

$ zsh --version
zsh 5.8 (x86_64-apple-darwin18.7.0)

Other helpful materials:

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CY
CY

Written by CY

Learning to be a full-stack developer.

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