How to restore bash history function in macOS Sierra

bashhistoryterminal

I installed Sierra OS on my iMac without any troubles. But, when I open Terminal, I can't scroll through the bash history when pressing the up arrow.

Best Answer

Have a look at /etc/bashrc_Apple_Terminal. The file contains comments that explain how to disable bash_sessions:

# The save/restore mechanism is disabled if the following file exists:
#
# ~/.bash_sessions_disable

or just disable their shell history mechanism

# You may disable this behavior and share a single history by setting
# SHELL_SESSION_HISTORY to 0. There are some common user customizations
# that arrange to share new commands among running shells by
# manipulating the history at each prompt, and they typically include
# 'shopt -s histappend'; therefore, if the histappend shell option is
# enabled, per-session history is disabled by default. You may
# explicitly enable it by setting SHELL_SESSION_HISTORY to 1.

Related Solutions

How to make bash (Terminal.app) remember history of previous sessions

You'll need to tell bash where to keep your history file, and how many lines to keep:

# Set the location of your HISTFILE
echo "export HISTFILE=/Users/<USERNAME>/.bash_history" >> ~/.bash_profile

# Number of lines to keep (1000 in this example)
echo "export HISTFILESIZE=1000" >> ~/.bash_profile

# Set how many commands to keep in the current session history list
echo "export HISTSIZE=80" >> ~/.bash_profile

# Ignore commands that start with a space
echo "export HISTIGNORE=\"&:[ ]*:exit\"" >> ~/.bash_profile

MacOS – How to set the Mac OS X terminal history to act like linux when using up/down arrows

Mark who commented on my questions above was correct. This is a bash setting. If you add the following to your ~/.bash_profile script, you will get this behavior.

HISTCONTROL=ignoredups

You can also ignore any lines that start with a space:

HISTCONTROL=ignorespace

Or do both, by using:

HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to make bash (Terminal.app) remember history of previous sessions

MacOS – How to set the Mac OS X terminal history to act like linux when using up/down arrows

Related Question