Setting up fish shell from scratch on macOS

Setup

Install Fish

Run the following command to install Fish

brew install fish

Set fish as the default shell

echo /opt/homebrew/bin/fish | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
chsh -s /opt/homebrew/bin/fish

restart your terminal for changes to take effect

Add Homebrew to the PATH env variable

fish_add_path "/opt/homebrew/bin/"

Create completion files

fish_update_completions

Customisations

Change the colour scheme

I like to use the base-16-shell git repo to set up Solarized theme. By setting it this way, I edit it one time in the shell config file and not per terminal emulator.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-shell.git ~/.config/base16-shell

Configuration

Add the following lines to the fish config ~/.config/fish/config.fish

# Base16 Shell
if status --is-interactive
    set BASE16_SHELL "$HOME/.config/base16-shell/"
    source "$BASE16_SHELL/profile_helper.fish"
end

base16_solarozed-light

Changing the prompt

I simply use starship with default settings here. Starship requires a Nerd-Font to display all the prompt information correctly.

Installation

I prefer to use the Hack Nerd-Font and both Starship and Nerd-Fonts can be installed with HomeBrew

brew install --cask font-hack-nerd-font
brew install starship

Configuration

First, open your terminal settings and set the default font to your preferred Nerd-Font

Next, add the following lines to the end of your fish config file

#Starship setup
starship init fish | source

Basic Improvements

bat is a replacement for cat and makes it far easier to quickly read files. It has syntax highlighting and line numbering straight out of the box.

eza is a replacement for the venerable ls command. It uses colours to distinguish file types and metadata . it knows about symlinks, extended attributes and Git.

Installation

brew install bat eza

Configuration

In your fish config file add the following lines

# `ls` → `eza` abbreviation
# Requires `brew install eza`
if type -q eza
  abbr --add -g ls 'eza --long --classify --all --header --git --no-user --tree --level 1'
end
 
# `cat` → `bat` abbreviation
# Requires `brew install bat`
if type -q bat
  abbr --add -g cat 'bat'
end

Once you restart your terminal or source your fish config file, when you type cat it will automatically replace the command with bat. Likewise when you type ls it will replace it with  eza --long --classify --all --header --git --no-user --tree --level 1

This is the basic setup I use across all my machines