Once in a while, I’ll write some blog posts about some tips, tricks, issues, etc. of both Windows 10 and MacOS. I don’t consider myself an expert on both operating systems ³ and you can never go wrong with Google. There are plenty of tutorials and help sites out there in addition to the official support sites provided by both Microsoft (Windows) and Apple (MacOS). But if they’re blog posts or if they have dates on them, be sure to check them also, as technology in general always goes through major upgrades, some tutorial posts may even end up being outdated. It happens. Please keep in mind that this post is more of a compilation of all the sites that provided tutorials on how to get rid of that annoying note on top of your bash profile, asking you to make ZSH as your default terminal instead.

That message that we’re talking about here looks something like this:

According to this support article from Apple, eventually, the bash shell will eventually be gone in the future OS updates, and that it’s already suggesting right now to make the switch. I recommend reading this article because it also has the instructions on how to make ZSH as your default shell. The ZSH shell is already installed once you upgrade to MacOS Catalina, so you won’t have to go through the whole installation and setup. All you need to do is to make ZSH your default shell.

1. Go to the Apple menu on the top right corner > System Preferences > Users & Groups.
2. Click on the lock icon at the bottom, then enter your Macbook’s username and password. ⁴
3.  Control + click your username on the users list on the left side of the window, then choose  Advanced Options...
4. Choose /bin/zsh from the dropdown menu on Login shell field, then click OK.
5. On your terminal, enter chsh -s /bin/zsh. Your terminal will switch to the ZSH shell.

And the next time you log into your Terminal again, you won’t have to see that annoying message on the top of your shell window anymore.

How to customize your ZSH shell?

In the Skillcrush GIt & GitHub module, there is a BONUS step in which you can add an emoji on your bash shell. But, as mentioned before, the BONUS step only works on the bash profile and not ZSH. I’ve never really tried customizing my shell by adding an emoji, ⁵ but I have customized my shell by changing themes, colors, etc.

I’m sure that there are a lot of ZSH theme systems that you can install so you can use those instead, but the one I came across through my searching is oh-my-zsh. There are a few tutorials I came up through Google searching, so I’ll just add the links below:

• How to add an emoji status on ZSH terminal
• How to customize your terminal with ZSH

There are plenty more out there, but the ones that are specifically for ZSH are the ones I linked above. I do plan on changing themes for my ZSH, but for now, do some trial and error.

Have fun!

1. Some of us, anyway…
2. I still love my Dell laptop, but because of wifi connection issues (defective modem maybe?), I had to send it to Dell for repairs and diagnosis.
3. Most especially MacOS…
4. This is only if you created a user account with a password, otherwise skip this step. I recommend adding a password on your Macbook though…
5. Though it is cute, and I like cute…