fish shell

Finally, a command line shell for the 90s

fish is a smart and user-friendly command line shell for Linux, macOS, and the rest of the family.

Works Out of the Box

A git clone followed by the completions for 'git checkout --track origin/', showing the origin's remote branches
fish will delight you with features like tab completions and syntax highlighting that just work. It will make you exclaim "Of course fish does that!".

Sensible Scripting

A demonstration of a switch/case tree that detects the OS
fish is fully scriptable, and its syntax is simple, clean, and consistent. You'll never write esac again.

Reads Your Mind

fish shows suggestions based on files, completions and your history. In this case it offers to turn 'ssh -' into 'ssh -l demo SomeLongHost@SomeLongDomainIAlwaysMisspell.com', and you can accept it with right arrow or control-F
fish suggests commands as you type based on history and completions, just like a web browser. Watch out, Netscape Navigator 4.0!

Abbreviations

Tired of writing many characters when few would do? Fish allows you to abbreviate!

Glorious VGA Color

A colorful commandline, with syntax highlighting
fish supports 24 bit true color, the state of the art in terminal technology. Behold the monospaced rainbow.

Web Based Configuration

Fish's web config tool, on the prompt selection tab
For those lucky few with a graphical computer, you can set your colors and view functions, variables, and history all from a web page. Or not, you can also stay in your comfy terminal and set them there.

Teach me to fish

Tutorial Documentation FAQ Blog

Go fish

Fedora

Packages

dnf install fish

Arch Linux

Packages

pacman -S fish

Gentoo

Packages

emerge fish

Void

Packages

xbps-install fish-shell

NixOS

Packages

nix-env -i fish

GNU Guix

Packages

guix package -i fish

Solus Project

Packages

eopkg install fish

Slackware

Packages

sbopkg -i fish

Brew Icon

Homebrew

brew install fish

FreeBSD

FreeBSD

pkg install fish

NetBSD

NetBSD

pkgin install fish

OpenBSD

pkg_add fish

Cygwin

Cygwin

fish is available in setup,
in the Shells category.

MSYS2

MSYS2

pacman -S fish

Release History

Release Notes

  • 4.9.3, released September 8, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.9.2, released September 5, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.9.1, released September 4, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.9.0, released September 3, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.8.1, released July 13, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.8.0, released June 24, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.7.1, released May 7, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.7.0, released May 6, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.6.0, released March 28, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.5.0, released February 17, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.4.0, released February 3, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.3.3, released January 7, 2026 (tarball)
  • 4.3.2, released December 30, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.3.1, released December 28, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.3.0, released December 28, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.2.1, released November 13, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.2.0, released November 10, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.1.2, released October 7, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.1.1, released September 30, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.1.0, released September 27, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.0.9, released September 27, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.0.8, released September 18, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.0.6, released September 12, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.0.2, released April 20, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.0.1, released March 13, 2025 (tarball)
  • 4.0.0, released February 27, 2025 (tarball)
  • 3.7.1, released March 19, 2024 (tarball)
  • 3.7.0, released January 1, 2024 (tarball)
  • 3.6.4, released December 5, 2023 (tarball)

Development

fish development is hosted on GitHub. To clone the git repository:
git clone https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell.git
Build instructions are provided at the bottom of the GitHub page.

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