# fish shell

97 Hacker News commenters recommended fish shell and 20 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 5 years (11 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A fast, friendly interactive shell with autocompletion, syntax highlighting and a good prompt out of the box, though it isn't bash-compatible, so pasted commands sometimes fail.

## Why people recommend it

- Great defaults, no configuration needed (11 comments): "I just grew accustomed to fish defaults and have no trouble with it now, and no longer give any thought to shell configuration." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46565025)) "you can also quite easily install fish on any host and it won't need any configuration to match what you're already used to" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46565034)) "Things are so much easier. No need to a massive amount of plugins and configs, mostly works out of the box." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47139548))
- Smart autocompletion and history search (6 comments): "fish shell provides the same with abbreviations, smart autocompletion, and fuzzy history search all baked right in" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47899151)) "Fish out of the box is super performant, lots of tools ship completions for it, and the UX is just great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568609)) "It's a lovely interactive experience out of the box with colors, completions, a great prompt" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563316))
- Simpler, saner syntax (4 comments): "where they don't, the fish version is nearly always more pleasant and obviously correct for interactive use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48581194)) "No implicit word splitting : spaces in variables won't unexpectedly become separate arguments." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50044461)) "There's just so much less magic to learn and remember with fish that I don't want to go back." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48581596))
- Fast startup and performance (3 comments): "I like its architecture (defining functions to change its look-and-feel - great idea!) and of course its 32 ms startup time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564427)) "Fish out of the box is super performant, lots of tools ship completions for it, and the UX is just great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568609)) "That's a ridiculously low number. Wow! I don't think my personal mac has such speed either." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48581402))

## What people warn about

- Not bash-compatible; pasted commands break (4 comments): "an inability to “copy this command from stackoverflow” (or in the modern day, it’ll be copy this from ChatGPT) into your shell" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564136)) "they will be very confused copy-pasting commands meant for bash from the internet and them not working" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45960900)) "Biggest problem being not being able to paste much of the complicated code found online." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566493))
- Another shell language to learn (2 comments): "I don't feel fish (or zsh) offer an advantage big enough to bother learning that language" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47534007)) "Issue is the cognitive overhead to know 2 distinct shell languages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564131))
- Missing features some users want (4 comments): "Fish doesn't let you put redirections at the beginning like that (though I wish it did)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48954806)) "My biggest complaint about the fish shell is the lack of true vi mode." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47528308)) "immediately had to find community plugins for both `z` and `!!`/`!$`" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46644820))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Bash](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bash.md): 171 recommend
- [PowerShell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/powershell.md): 156 recommend
- [Nushell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nushell.md): 92 recommend
- [zsh](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zsh.md): 52 recommend
- [Xonsh shell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xonsh.md): 15 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "fish shell", https://hackerapproved.com/p/fish-shell/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).