Mac OS X Mojave - set environment variable permanently

Question

I am using mac os mojave (10.14.3). I set the environment variable in both ~/.bash_profile and ~/.bashrc and I ran both ~/.bash_profile and ~/.bashrc. Then in the same terminal I can see the values which I set (using printenv), but if I open a new terminal then I can not see previously set env variable.

Please give some suggestions.

Update

In mac os Bigsur(11.2.3), the default terminal was zsh ( I did not check for other versions) and setting envs in ~/.zshenv as in

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$PATH:~/Library/Android/sdk/build-tools/29.0/' >> ~/.zshenv

and running . ~/.zshenv helped me saving the envs permanently

see https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/289060/setting-variables-in-environment-plist — Jean-Baptiste Yunès, Apr 12 '19 at 10:00
Please follow steps [here](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/106355/setting-the-system-wide-path-environment-variable-in-mavericks). Hope it helps — Stakshi, Jul 03 '19 at 06:50
[This answer](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56656031/how-do-i-set-an-environment-variable-on-macos-mojave?answertab=active#answer-56668060), using launchctl on macOS Mojave 10.14, worked for me! — Wendell Pereira, Jan 09 '20 at 15:34

score 7 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 05 '21 at 22:48

7

This works for OS X 10.14 "Mojave":

Step 1: go to your $HOME/Library/LaunchAgents directory and create setenv.MY_VAR.plist file with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
  <plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>setenv.MY_VAR</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/bin/launchctl</string>
    <string>setenv</string>
    <string>MY_VAR</string>
    <string>SOME_VALUE_FOR_MY_VAR</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Pay attantion that your file name and entries in the file match.

STEP 2: Run launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/setenv.MY_VAR.plist or - restart the system.

STEP 3: Restart your Terminal app.

STEP 4: Check if the var is there: env. It should give you: MY_VAR=SOME_VALUE_FOR_MY_VAR.

If you want to do more changes, first do launchctl unload... than launchctl load... again.

This is per user setting. If you want to set for all users, try doing the same in /Library/LaunchAgents.

edited Oct 05 '21 at 22:48

Ed Sabol

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answered Sep 30 '19 at 09:10

Danijel

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1

If you want to do it for all users I think the correct place is `/Library/LaunchAgents`, not `/Library/LaunchDaemons` – Joseph Fitzgerald Feb 04 '20 at 22:18
@JosephFitzgerald That's what the last sentence says. :-) – Danijel Feb 06 '20 at 08:27
Not quite. You wrote Daemons when the correct place is agents. The last sentence is supposed to highlight your own Libraries folder vs the root Libraries folder. – Joseph Fitzgerald Feb 07 '20 at 14:26
1

The last sentence has been edited as of October 2021 and should now be correct. Thanks, @JosephFitzgerald, for pointing it out. – Ed Sabol Oct 07 '21 at 18:22

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 12 '19 at 09:47

Not sure how you're setting the environment variables, but make sure that you're using the export command to persist it across shells, e.g. export EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim. You can then check what variables were exported from another shell with export -p.

Running bash directly from the command line will source your .bashrc file. If the .bashrc file isn't being sourced when you open a new terminal window, it's possible that you're not running bash.

In the case where /bin/sh is by default your default shell (as opposed to bash), you can change that by running chsh -s $(which bash).

Mac OS X Mojave - set environment variable permanently

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