Install fish shell on macOS Mojave with brew

fish_install.md

Installing Fish shell on MacOS (Intel and M1) using brew

Fish is a smart and user-friendly command line (like bash or zsh). This is how you can instal Fish on MacOS and make your default shell.

Note that you need the https://brew.sh/ package manager installed on your machine.

Install Fish

brew install fish

More info: https://fishshell.com/docs/current/tutorial.html#tut_path

Check the path

Check the fish path with which fish . In the examples below it was located at: /opt/homebrew/bin/fish On older Macs default path is /usr/local/bin/fish, replace accordingly in the instruction below.

Make fish the default shell

MacOS allow you to change your default Shell using comande line or GUI methodes https://support.apple.com/en-us/102360.

Using the terminal:

1. check the fish path with which fish. In the examples below it was located at: /opt/homebrew/bin/fish. On older Macs the path might differ.
2. chsh -s /opt/homebrew/bin/fish

Add brew binaries in fish path

run the command: fish_add_path /opt/homebrew/bin

Optionnal Configurations

Auto Completions

To collect command completions for all commands run:

fish_update_completions

Edit config.sh

I edited the ~/.config/fish/config.fish to have my terminal in english

set -x LANG en_US.UTF-8

Configure your shell

You can configure your shell by launching the web interface, run:

fish_config

Related documentation

• https://fishshell.com/docs/current/cmds/fish_add_path.html
• https://linux.die.net/man/1/chsh

macos Sonoma 14.5

6. Add brew binaries in fish path
   echo (echo; echo 'eval "$(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)"') >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish

This is the conventional way/ command to add brew libs to the path in bash or zsh shell.
In fish when i executed got error "fish: command substitutions not allowed here"
adding extra echo at the begining resolves the error and adds the path to the config.fish file properly and works

1. check the fish path with which fish. In the examples below it was located at: /opt/homebrew/bin/fish. On older Macs the path might differ.
2. Add fish to the know shells run the command: sudo sh -c 'echo /opt/homebrew/bin/fish >> /etc/shells'
3. Restart your terminal
4. Set fish as the default shell run the command: chsh -s /opt/homebrew/bin/fish
5. Restart your terminal and check if it launched with fish or not

Editing /etc/shells manually is a terrible hack. Use the official method instead:

1. Choose Apple menu  > System Settings, then click Users & Groups in the sidebar.
2. Control-click your user name or user picture in the list of users on the right, then choose Advanced Options.
3. Enter your user name and password when prompted.
4. Choose a shell from the “Login shell” menu, then click OK to save the changes.

This lets you specify the path to the shell of your choice, even if it isn't in /etc/shells.

Thanks all, I updated the gist. (I don't use fish myself, but the gist seems quiet popular, so I feel that it needed an update :) )