How to change terminal shell from -zsh to -bash on Mac

🐚 Step 1. Check your current shell

Open the Mac terminal window by

• command ⌘ + spaceand search for terminal, or
• use Launchpad and search for terminal

Once the terminal window is open, type echo $0and press enter

If you see the result is -bash, you don’t need to read this article but thank you for being here 🙌 💛

If you see the result is -zsh, continue to Step 2.

🐚 Step 2. Change -zsh to -bash

Execute command chsh -s /bin/bash

You should see something similar to this screenshot:

Here comes the confusing part, you might be wondering what password or where to enter the password, here are the answers:

• You should use the same password that unlocks your Mac
• You literally just start typing and the password won’t be showing in the terminal window

Press enter once you are done with typing the password, and you should see something like this:

Now, close the terminal window and reopen it (you will still get -zsh if you don’t reopen), execute the command echo $0 again.

🚀You should see -bash now.

It’s a little confusing that it still says

The default interactive shell is now zsh.

But as long as it returns -bash after you execute the command echo $0, you are golden!

*This article is written by a real human being without consulting ChatGPT or other Generative AI tools.