Changing Your Shell to Zsh or Fish in Omarchy Without Breaking Everything

[d-cas]

Changing Your Shell to Zsh or Fish in Omarchy Without Breaking Everything

Why chsh Doesn't Work

If you've tried changing your default shell using chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh or chsh -s /usr/bin/fish, you've probably noticed one of two things: either the change doesn't seem to stick, or things start breaking. With fish specifically, you'll likely end up staring at a black screen after entering your LUKS password on boot. This isn't a bug. It's how Omarchy is architected.

Here's what's actually happening under the hood.

Omarchy's entire boot chain expects bash. SDDM (the display manager) launches your session via /usr/share/sddm/scripts/wayland-session, which expects a POSIX-compatible shell. Session initialization relies on /etc/profile and everything in /etc/profile.d/*.sh being sourced, and these are bash scripts. Your user environment sources ~/.bash_profile, which sources ~/.bashrc, which sources ~/.local/share/omarchy/default/bash/rc. All of Omarchy's helper scripts (those omarchy-launch-* and omarchy-restart-* scripts in ~/.local/share/omarchy/bin/) are written in bash. Hyprland startup via ~/.local/share/omarchy/boot.sh and autostart.conf expects bash to be available.

When you change your login shell to zsh or fish, this entire chain breaks. Zsh and fish won't source bash config files, use different syntax, and can't execute bash scripts the same way. The system literally can't boot your desktop environment.

Even fish's own documentation warns about this:

Setting fish as your login shell may cause issues, such as an incorrect PATH. Some operating systems, including a number of Linux distributions, require the login shell to be Bourne-compatible and to read configuration from /etc/profile.

The Correct Way: Configure Your Terminal Instead

The solution is simple. Keep bash as your login shell so the system boots properly, but configure your terminal emulator to launch your preferred shell.

Method 1: Using Alacritty (Omarchy's default terminal)

Add this to ~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.toml:

[shell]
program = "/usr/bin/zsh"

Or if you're using the older YAML format (~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.yml):

shell:
  program: /usr/bin/zsh

Replace /usr/bin/zsh with /usr/bin/fish if you prefer fish.

Method 2: Using a Different Terminal

If you want to use a different terminal emulator (like ghostty, kitty, wezterm, etc.), configure that terminal's startup shell. Not sure how to change your default terminal in Omarchy? There's a quick guide at the bottom of this post.

For ghostty, add to ~/.config/ghostty/config:

command = /usr/bin/zsh

For kitty, add to ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf:

shell /usr/bin/zsh

For wezterm, add to ~/.config/wezterm/wezterm.lua:

config.default_prog = { '/usr/bin/zsh' }

That's it. You keep bash as the login shell (don't touch chsh), and now your terminal launches zsh (or fish) every time while the system stays stable.

Shell-Specific Configuration

Zsh

For zsh, you can pretty much copy your bash aliases directly to ~/.zshrc. The syntax is nearly identical:

# Just source the Omarchy bash aliases, or copy them over
source ~/.local/share/omarchy/default/bash/aliases

If you want to manually add them to your ~/.zshrc, the Omarchy aliases work as-is in zsh since the syntax is compatible.

Fish

Fish doesn't use bash-style aliases for complex functions. Here's how to translate Omarchy's default aliases to fish syntax for your ~/.config/fish/config.fish:

# File system
alias ls='eza -lh --group-directories-first --icons=auto'
alias lsa='ls -a'
alias lt='eza --tree --level=2 --long --icons --git'
alias lta='lt -a'
alias ff="fzf --preview 'bat --style=numbers --color=always {}'"

function cd
    if test (count $argv) -eq 0
        builtin cd ~
        return
    else if test -d "$argv[1]"
        builtin cd $argv
    else
        z $argv && printf "\U000F17A9 " && pwd || echo "Error: Directory not found"
    end
end

function open
    xdg-open $argv >/dev/null 2>&1 &
end

# Directories
alias ..='cd ..'
alias ...='cd ../..'
alias ....='cd ../../..'

# Tools
alias d='docker'
alias r='rails'

function n
    if test (count $argv) -eq 0
        nvim .
    else
        nvim $argv
    end
end

# Git
alias g='git'
alias gcm='git commit -m'
alias gcam='git commit -a -m'
alias gcad='git commit -a --amend'

Key differences: fish uses $argv instead of $@, and (count $argv) instead of $#.

Works perfectly. You get to daily drive zsh or fish without breaking anything.

Alternative Method: Using .bashrc to Drop Into Your Shell

If you want a terminal-agnostic solution that works everywhere (including ssh sessions), you can modify your .bashrc to automatically switch to your preferred shell after bash initializes.

Add this to the end of your ~/.bashrc:

For Fish:

if [[ $(ps --no-header --pid=$PPID --format=comm) != "fish" && -z ${BASH_EXECUTION_STRING} ]]
then
    exec fish
fi

For Zsh:

if [[ $(ps --no-header --pid=$PPID --format=comm) != "zsh" && -z ${BASH_EXECUTION_STRING} ]]
then
    exec zsh
fi

This way bash handles all the system initialization and Omarchy setup, then immediately drops you into your preferred shell.

When to use this method:

• You use multiple terminal emulators and don't want to configure each one
• You want your shell to be consistent even in ssh sessions
• You prefer one central configuration

When to use the terminal emulator method:

• You want clean separation between shell configs
• You like explicit configuration
• You want different terminals to potentially use different shells

Both methods work perfectly. Pick whichever fits your workflow.

Bonus: Changing Your Default Terminal Emulator

If you want to switch from Alacritty to a different terminal emulator, here's how.

GUI Method (recommended):

Press SUPER+ALT+SPACE to open Walker, then navigate to Setup > Defaults. Find the terminal option and select your preferred terminal emulator (ghostty, kitty, wezterm, etc.). This modifies the same config file behind the scenes.

Direct Config Method:

Edit ~/.config/uwsm/default and look for the line that says:

export TERMINAL=alacritty

Change it to your preferred terminal:

export TERMINAL=ghostty

The GUI method is cleaner and ensures everything gets updated properly, but both methods modify the same line.

Bonus tip: Firefox or Brave users can set their default browser in the same file by adding or modifying this line:

export BROWSER=firefox

or

export BROWSER=brave

[lbonvarl]

My experience has been pretty good with chsh -s /usr/bin/zshand https://github.com/romkatv/zsh4humans with no noticable downsides or strange behaviors, but that is on a manual install and no encryption on an old HP6200 desktop, details in #451