MacBook Air Message: “The default shell is now ZSH"

There are several different command line interpreters ("shells") that run on Unix/Linux-type systems. The default shell for Mac OS X used to be bash.

Apple has let their version of bash get out of date over the years. The current version of GNU bash is something like 5.2 (September 2022). On Ventura, on an Apple Silicon Mac,

% /bin/bash --version

returns

GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (arm64-apple-darwin22)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

At some point, Apple decided that they wanted people to use zsh. So that's the default on new Macs.

But what about a Mac where you did an upgrade or migration from an older version of macOS? Here, it appears that they chose to preserve the old preference (bash) while nagging you to change it to their preferred one (zsh).

If you go into Terminal, and type the command

chsh -s /bin/zsh

that changes the preference. Next time you go into Terminal, it will start up a zsh command-line interpreter rather than a bash command-line interpreter – and you won't get the nag.

Unless you're a power command line user, you'll probably never notice any other difference.

Rmitch2288 wrote:

Simultaneously, this is happening:

I have a message in System Preferences that says “Some account services will not be available until you sign in”.... however, no matter how many times I sign in it keeps looping the sign in between my Apple ID PW and then my laptop PW.....I can never satisfy the request.

Probably not related to the zsh nag.