How to make OS X to read .bash_profile not .profile file

Question

I have read so many suggestions about, not putting your customization aka commands in \".profile\" file. Rather, create a .bash_profile for yourself and add your alias and e

Answer 1

According to Apple,

zsh (Z shell) is the default shell for all newly created user accounts, starting with macOS Catalina.

So you should verify your default shell with the command:

$ echo $SHELL

If the result is /bin/bash your default shell is BASH, and if the result is /bin/zsh the default is ZSH.

Go to home with $ cd ~/ and create the profile (if it does not exist) and edit it with the commands:

For bash:

$ touch .bash_profile
$ open .bash_profile

For ZSH:

$ touch .zprofile
$ open .zprofile

Answer 2

It's also possible that your terminal shell is defaulting to sh instead of bash. You can verify this first:

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/tcsh

To change this to bash, you can go into your Terminal -> Preferences -> Startup tab, and change "Shell Opens With:" from "Default login shell" to Command and value "/bin/bash".

Alternately, you can change your default shell by executing the following command at the command prompt:

chsh -s bin/bash

After you do one of these, open a new shell window, and your .bash_profile should be sourced.

Answer 3

I solved by simply adding bash (in a newline) into ~/.bash_profile file.

Answer 4

According to the manual page that ships with OS X:

... it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable. The --noprofile option may be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.

It should only read ~/.profile as a last resort if neither ~/.bash_profile nor ~/.bash_login are readable.

On all of my OS X systems, I have my ~/.bash_profile set to:

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
    source ~/.bashrc
fi

It is highly recommended that you do this on OS X in order to get bash to read your ~/.bashrc file like you would expect.

Answer 5

It should be mentioned that bash will first look for a /etc/profile file, as stated in the Bash man pages.

When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-inter- active shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes com- mands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists. After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable. The --noprofile option may be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.

Answer 6

You can use zsh to fix the problem.

The Z shell (also known as zsh) is a Unix shell that is built on top of bash (the default shell for macOS) with additional features. It's recommended to use zsh over bash.

Installation

1. Install zsh using Homebrew: $ brew install zsh
2. Install Oh My Zsh: $ sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
3. Move to .bash_profile setting .zshrc file
4. To apply the changes you make you need to either start new shell instance or run: source ~/.zshrc