I've spent years curating a collection of Mac bash aliases and shortcuts to make my life easier. My full .bash_profile is below, feel free to take whatever you find useful and put it to good use.

A (very) quick primer on .bash_profile for Mac Users

There is a hidden file in your Mac’s user directory named .bash_profile. This file is loaded before Terminal loads your shell environment and contains all the startup configuration and preferences for your command line interface. Within it you can change your terminal prompt, change the colors of text, add aliases to functions you use all the time, and so much more.

This file is often called a ‘dot file’ because the ‘.’ at the beginning of it’s name makes it invisible in the Mac Finder. You can view all invisible files in the Terminal by typing ls -al in any directory.

How to edit your .bash_profile

For the newly initiated, here’s how you can edit the .bash_profile on your Mac.

References for PS1, bash,.bashrc, etc. Prompt Magic (IBM.com) Show the current Git, Mercurial, Subversion or Bazaar branch in your prompt (Graham Poulter) bash reference manual (gnu.org) PS1 line with git current branch and colors (stackoverflow.com). It should be in your home directory. For example, if your user-name is MyName, you’ll find it in /Users/MyName. However, I don’t think Apple puts a.bashrc or.bashprofile in the home directory at installation. The bash shell is the standard terminal environment included with most Linux distributions, included with macOS, and available for installation on Windows 10. It remembers the commands you type and stores them in a history file. You probably know a few basics of the bash history, but it’s a lot more powerful than you might realize.

Step 1: Fire up Terminal.app

Step 2: Type nano .bash_profile – This command will open the .bash_profile document (or create it if it doesn’t already exist) in the easiest to use text editor in Terminal – Nano.

Step 3: Now you can make a simple change to the file. Paste these lines of code to change your Terminal prompt.

Step 4: Now save your changes by typing ctrl +o Hit return to save. Then exit Nano by typing ctrl+x

Step 5: Now we need to *activate your changes. Type source .bash_profile and watch your prompt change.

My .bash_profile

I have been compiling my own set of aliases and configurations for years in which time I have borrowed copiously from others who have made their aliases available online. I can claim credit for very little of what follows. I recently became aware of alias.sh, a site making sharing BASH aliases easy. Check it out.

Update: Due to popular demand, my bash profile is now available as a Gist for your forking pleasure.

Without further ado, here is my .bash_profile:

Update: If you enjoyed this post, you might also like:

A collection of Bash scripting utilities I compiled to make custom Bash programming easier.

To make aliases of macOS Unix commands in your bash or zsh shell on macOS and earlier versions, it is done via your .bash_profile or .zsh file which lives in your home account directory, if the file does not already exist, just create one.

As of macOS 10.6 Catalina, Apple has made the zsh shell the default shell, previously it was the bash shell.

Launch Terminal from the /Application/Utilities folder

Go to your home directory by just entering cd followed by the ‘return’ key to enter the command:

List your home directory contents including invisible files to see if the file already exists, use: Best mac eyeshadow for asian face.

Create the .bash_profile or .zsh file using the command line program called ‘nano’ if it doesn’t exist:

When the .bash_profile or .zsh file is created you are ready to enter your alias commands.
So here I am using the alias ‘l’ to alias the command ‘ls -lah’

In nano ‘control+o’ to write the file out and ‘control+x’ to exit the file.

Refresh the shell environment by entering the command below:

Bashrc For Mac

Or.

That’s it, now the alias will take effect.

How To Edit Bashrc File

To add other aliases just start a new line, and apply the same formatting.