Feature request: Use zsh (or login shell) for Bash tool on macOS
Status Fixed / completed
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 4 comments · opened Apr 6, 2026 · closed Apr 6, 2026
macOS ships bash 3.2.57 (2007) due to GPLv3 licensing, and Apple will never update it — they switched the default shell to zsh back in Catalina (2019). The Bash tool currently hardcodes bash, which means on macOS you're stuck with a 19-year-old shell that lacks features like associative arrays (declare -A), mapfile, readarray, and other bash 4+ additions.
Since virtually every macOS user's login shell is zsh, it would make sense for the Bash tool to either:
- Use the user's configured login shell (from
$SHELLor/etc/passwd), or - At minimum, default to zsh on macOS
Related issues: #40653 (Bash tool ignores login shell), #31437 (bash 3.2 runtime issues)
This issue was raised with AI assistance (Claude Code).
4 Comments
Found 3 possible duplicate issues:
This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
Closing as duplicate of #7490. Upvoted there instead.
FWIW, this https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/31437 is not a bash 3.2 runtime issue
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