Changing your login shell on Mac OS X LionEdit
Via the command line
On Mac OS X merely running sudo chsh
is not enough, as Lion doesn’t treat /etc/passwd
as the definitive authority of user account information, but instead defers to a thing called "Directory Service" that is managed using sudo dscl
.
For example, changing your user’s shell to /usr/local/bin/zsh
:
$ sudo dscl
> list Local/Default/Users
> read Local/Default/Users/<username>
> change Local/Default/Users/<username> UserShell /bin/bash /usr/local/bin/zsh
Via the GUI
Go to the "Users & Groups" pane of the System Preferences application:
- Click the padlock to unlock the pane
- Right click on your user account in the list on the left, and select "Advanced Options"
- Select the desired shell from the list of available shells
Note that if you’ve added a custom shell to /etc/shells
it may not be visible in the list until your next login.