Why I Chose Fish Shell Over Zsh: Setup and Configurations

Martin Sidorov
6 min readOct 18, 2024
Photo by Lewis Kang'ethe Ngugi on Unsplash

Fish shell is an excellent choice for developers who want an out-of-the-box experience with minimal setup. One of the key reasons I prefer Fish over Zsh is that Fish comes pre-configured, offering fantastic auto-completion that supports not only built-in commands but also tools like Git, Make, and more.

For example, as you can see in the screenshot below, simply typing git and pressing Tab will present all Git commands along with descriptions. If you're switching branches, it even suggests all available branches and commits, so you don't need to manually look them up. This functionality eliminates the need for memorizing commands or constantly referring to Google. Fish Shell's auto-suggestion is so intuitive that it offers the correct command most of the time based on your previous usage patterns.

In cases where you type an incorrect or non-existent command, Fish will instantly highlight the command in red, notifying you of the error even before you hit Enter. This feature is incredibly helpful for catching mistakes early, saving time, and preventing command execution errors.

Fish shell tab git autocompletion

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Martin Sidorov
Martin Sidorov

Written by Martin Sidorov

A passionate Software Engineer from Estonia

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