I'm learning to develop in Rails, and have discovered the power of zsh. However, for some of my other tasks, I wish to use normal bash.
Although they are the same, I just feel comfortable with the layout of bash in some situations.
How do I switch back and forth, or turn zsh on and off?
You can just use exec to replace your current shell with a new shell:
Switch to bash:
exec bash Switch to zsh:
exec zsh This won't affect new terminal windows or anything, but it's convenient.
exit to get back to bash. Exec’ing it seems unnecessary and undesirable.
echo $SHELL it keep saying /bin/zsh, which have unexpected results like this problem with MC (bug 3580).you can try chsh -s /bin/bash to set the bash as the default, or chsh -s /bin/zsh to set the zsh as the default.
Terminal will need a restart to take effect.
I switch between zsh and bash somewhat frequently. For a while, I used to have to source my bash_profile every switch. Then I found out you can (typically) do
exec bash --login or just
exec bash -l 
if it is just a temporary switch
you can use exec as mentioned above, but for more of a permanent solution.
you can use chsh -s /bin/bash (to switch to bash) and chsh -s /bin/zsh (to switch to zsh)
For Bash, try
chsh -s $(which bash) For zsh, try
chsh -s $(which zsh) In Mac OS Catalina default interactive shell is zsh. To change shell to zsh from bash:
chsh -s /bin/zsh Then you need to enter your Mac password. Quit the terminal and reopen it. To check whether it's changed successfully to ssh, issue the following command.
echo $SHELL If the result is /bin/zsh, your task is completed.
To change it back to bash, issue the following command on terminal.
chsh -s /bin/bash Verify it again using echo $SHELL. Then result should be /bin/bash.
you can just type bash or if you always want to use bash:
on "iTerm2"
bashTest by closing iTerm and open it again
Follow the below steps:
chsh -s /bin/bash
Restart terminal
Check which shell is in use: echo $SHELL
source .profile
You are back with Bash!
zsh has a builtin command emulate which can emulate different shells by setting the appropriate options, although csh will never be fully emulated.
emulate bash perform commands emulate -R zsh The -R flag restores all the options to their default values for that shell.
See: zsh manual
You should be able just to type bash into the terminal to switch to bash, and then type zsh to switch to zsh. Works for me at least.
zsh or bash you are going into a sub-shell (subprocess under current shell). You will need to type exit a number of times to return to the top-most shell.
You can achieve this also via the UI by the following steps.
Step 1: Go to Preferences -> Users & Groups
Step 2: Select the user and press the unlock button and follow by entering the password
Step 3: Right click on the user and then select Advanced Options
Step 4: Select /bin/bash as the Login Shell
Note: You need to restart the shell to take this into effect.
For me, the solution was this:
Edit:
sudo vi /etc/passwd Find your user, for me it was for example:
ubuntu:x:1000:1001::/home/ubuntu:/bin/sh For you it might be:
ubuntu:x:1000:1001::/home/ubuntu:/bin/zsh And change it to:
ubuntu:x:1000:1001::/home/ubuntu:/bin/bash If you want bash to be defaul, or the line above if you want it to be zsh by default.
/etc/passwd now has a warning at the top saying it's only used when macOS is in single user mode, and there were no user-added users in it as of Sequoia 15.3. It's safer to use chsh -s as mentioned in other answers.You can easily switch back to bash by using command "bye"
