MacOS – How to add a directory to PATH when using `zsh` in Sierra

environment-variablesmacoszsh

In macOS Sierra 10.12.x, what is the modern way to add a directory to the PATH environment variable that can work across shells or specifically work with zsh shell (I switched from the default bash to zsh).

I have seen some Questions and Answers such as this one that are bash-specific. And I have seen some such as this one about launchd but it seems I've read launchd is not the right right in later versions of macOS (not sure). I could find no specific references for Sierra, so I am posting now.

I am trying to install Maven with instructions saying:

Add the bin directory of the created directory apache-maven-3.3.9 to the PATH environment variable

Best Answer

export

To change the path within your shell session, not system-wide, you can use the bash-style export command with zsh, as documented here.

The name of the PATH variable is case-sensitive and must be all-uppercase.

export PATH=$PATH:/folder/you/want

To verify your change, run:

echo $PATH

You will see results like this.

/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/folder/you/want

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