On a new setup, tmux is using bash instead of my default (zsh).
How can I force it to use zsh?
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12figured it out. Can set the following in tmux config: set -g default-command /bin/zsh set -g default-shell /bin/zsh– re5etMar 6, 2011 at 5:33
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5FWIW, you don't need to set default-command if you've set default-shell.– Nicholas RileyFeb 29, 2012 at 20:03
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12 Answers
set-option -g default-shell /bin/zsh
in ~/.tmux.conf or /etc/tmux.conf. Works on Fedora.
You can reload the config with <leader>: source-file <conf file> e.g.
<C-b>: source-file ~/.tmux.conf
You would need to do it for every tmux instance. Otherwise you may restart tmux with killall tmux; tmux
answered Feb 10, 2012 at 4:38
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11If this doesn't work for you then make sure you've restart
tmux. Seems obvious but took me a good hour to figure out! Sep 20, 2012 at 20:55 -
37BTW: Restarting tmux means
killall tmux; tmux. Took me quite a while to figure out.– js-coderDec 21, 2012 at 14:48 -
7Configs could be reloaded without killing a server:
bind R source-file ~/.tmux.conf \; display-message " Config reloaded..".Jul 2, 2013 at 8:01 -
19
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19@js-coder: to more cleanly kill your tmux server I'd recommend
tmux kill-serverinstead.– ChuimFeb 13, 2015 at 22:32
First, ensure your default shell is set properly to zsh by running this in your command line:
chsh -s $(`which zsh`) $USER
Placing the following in your ~/.tmux.conf is a more robust option for any shell.
set-option -g default-shell $SHELL
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1It is unnecessary to set user shell (
chsh -s) as tmux offers an option independent of that. May 30, 2017 at 6:00 -
2I thought it was more robust to use the $SHELL variable. But it adds an extra step and confusion so I do prefer the accepted answer.– DebugXYZJan 13, 2019 at 22:05
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1This is better than the accepted answer. My zsh is not installed in /bin/zsh. Aug 4, 2019 at 17:56
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For MacOS users, drop this line in the bottom of your ~/.tmux.conf
set-option -g default-command "reattach-to-user-namespace -l zsh"
After you add that, kill and restart your tmux server and all should work.
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2Er, is there any indication that re5et (the OP) is on a Mac, or has that wrapper program installed? Feb 1, 2012 at 7:13
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2Although it wasn't the answer the OP asked for, I ended up in this thread and indeed I am on OS X, using this wrapper, and this is the solution I needed; so Thank You! Sep 24, 2015 at 11:47
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2how does this differ from
set-option -g default-shell? the above does not seem to work with the Fish shell.– TommyFeb 9, 2016 at 1:50
tmux appears to use the SHELL environment variable, so the following should work:
SHELL=/usr/bin/zsh tmux
or
env SHELL=/usr/bin/zsh tmux
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Not sure why this was down-voted. It appears to be correct: a common problem is using a different shell for e.g. iTerm but leaving login shell as
/bin/bashto ensure nothing non-iteractive breaks. iTerm will not set$SHELLto the new shell name (unsure why), and bash initialisation will set it to the login shell if unset at startup. tmux then uses this value ifdefault-shellis not set explicitly. Nov 4, 2016 at 8:38 -
Yeah.. maybe
env SHELL=/usr/bin/zsh tmuxis better? (updated the answer).– blueyedNov 6, 2016 at 0:33
If you want to force tmux to use the same shell as specified in your environment variable, you could use:
# force SHELL ENV variable as shell
set-option -g default-shell ${SHELL}
in your ~/.tmux.conf or /etc/tmux.conf.
To get the change to actually take effect, you may need to tmux kill-server and then tmux to restart tmux.
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1This is the only answer that worked for me (the tmux kill-server command) Jan 27, 2018 at 0:30
The accepted answer did not work for me.
I had to write both
set -g default-shell "/bin/bash"
and
set -g default-command "/bin/bash"
in my ~/.tmux.conf — Dont forget to run the following commands to reload the tmux.conf:
tmux kill-server; tmux
Im am using tmux -V 2.6 under Ubuntu 18 in the gnome-shell emulator.
I also enhanced tmux with https://github.com/samoshkin/tmux-config. Check it out, it's really cool.
Use chsh(1):
chsh -s /bin/zsh $USER
answered Mar 6, 2011 at 5:22
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1
Add this into your ~/.tmux.conf
set -g default-command /usr/local/bin/fish
Log-out and log-in again fixed my problem. When echoed $SHELL it was still /bin/bash but after log-out it was changed to /usr/bin/zsh
For me I had to replace:
default-command "/usr/local/bin/fish"
default-shell "/usr/local/bin/fish"
with
set-option -g default-command "/usr/local/bin/fish"
set-option -g default-shell "/usr/local/bin/fish"
in .tmux.conf
and run command tmux kill-server; tmux
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@john I've used
set-option -ginstead ofset -g. different versions of tmux most probably– Ali AminSep 19, 2019 at 11:24 -
I wanted it to force to use an custom .bashrc. The following should work for any shell. My new is .tmux-bashrc is just an copy of .bashrc , minus the ncal or cowsay, etc... The speed improvements are now apparent.
in ~/.tmux.conf
set-option -g default-shell $SHELL
set-option -g default-command "$SHELL --init-file .tmux-bashrc"
As for me, I use Arch Linux inside Windows WSL2 and I have done chsh -s /bin/zsh $USER and when entering tmux it would not correctly load zsh(show some errors e.g. add-zsh-hook function definition file not found and so on.
If I enter zsh manually again, everything works fine.
And I found that inside ~/.tmux.conf add one line set -g default-command /bin/zsh should be the answer to fix this problem but I don't know why setting default-shell or setting SHELL variable was in vain.
