Environment variables in Mac OS X

Question

Update  The link below does not have a complete answer  Having to set the path or variable in two places  one for GUI and one for shell  is lame   Not Duplicate of  Setting environment variables in OS X     Coming from a Windows background where it s very easy to set and modify environment variables  just go to System Properties   Advanced   Environment Variables   it does not seem to be that straight forward on Mac OS 10 5  Most references say I should update  etc profile or    profile  Are those the equivalent of System Variables and User Variables  For example  where should I set my JAVA HOME variable     EDIT   I want to be able to access the variable from the terminal as well as an app like Eclipse  Also  I hope I don t have to restart logout to make this take effect

User · Answer

If you want to change environment variables permanently on macOS  set them in  etc paths   Note  this file is read-only by default  so you ll have to chmod for write permissions

User · Answer

I think what the OP is looking for is a simple  windows-like solution   here ya go   https   www macupdate com app mac 14617 rcenvironment

User · Answer

For GUI apps  you ll have to create and edit    MacOSX environment plist  More details here  You will need to log out for these to take effect  I m not sure if they also affect applications launched from Terminal  but I assume they would   For apps launched from Terminal  you can also edit the    profile file

User · Answer

Just open the    profile file  via nano in Terminal and type there    export PATH whatever you want  PATH   Save this file  cmd X and Y   After that please logout login again or just open a new tab in Terminal and try use your new variable   PLEASE DON T forget to add    PATH  after whatever you want  otherwise you ll erase all paths in PATH variable  which were there before that

User · Answer

For 2020 Mac OS X Catalina users   Forget about other useless answers  here only two steps needed    Create a file with the naming convention  priority-appname  Then copy-paste the path you want to add to PATH   E g  80-vscode with content  Applications Visual Studio Code app Contents Resources app bin  in my case  Move that file to  etc paths d   Don t forget to open a new tab new session  in the Terminal and type echo  PATH to check that your path is added    Notice  this method only appends your path to PATH

User · Answer

There s no need for duplication  You can set environment variables used by launchd  and child processes  i e  anything you start from Spotlight  using launchctl setenv   For example  if you want to mirror your current path in launchd after setting it up in  bashrc or wherever   PATH whatever you want launchctl setenv PATH  PATH   Environment variables are not automatically updated in running applications  You will need to relaunch applications to get the updated environment variables  although you can just set variables in your shell  e g  PATH whatever you want  there s no need to relaunch the terminal

User · Answer

Synchronize OS X environment variables for command line and GUI applications from a single source with osx-env-sync   I also posted an answer to a related question here

User · Answer

There are several places where you can set environment variables       profile  use this for variables you want to set in all programs launched from the terminal  note that  unlike on Linux  all shells opened in Terminal app are login shells      bashrc  this is invoked for shells which are not login shells  Use this for aliases and other things which need to be redefined in subshells  not for environment variables that are inherited   etc profile  this is loaded before    profile  but is otherwise equivalent  Use it when you want the variable to apply to terminal programs launched by all users on the machine  assuming they use bash      MacOSX environment plist  this is read by loginwindow on login  It applies to all applications  including GUI ones  except those launched by Spotlight in 10 5  not 10 6   It requires you to logout and login again for changes to take effect  This file is no longer supported as of OS X 10 8  your user s launchd instance  this applies to all programs launched by the user  GUI and CLI  You can apply changes at any time by using the setenv command in launchctl  In theory  you should be able to put setenv commands in    launchd conf  and launchd would read them automatically when the user logs in  but in practice support for this file was never implemented  Instead  you can use another mechanism to execute a script at login  and have that script call launchctl to set up the launchd environment   etc launchd conf  this is read by launchd when the system starts up and when a user logs in  They affect every single process on the system  because launchd is the root process  To apply changes to the running root launchd you can pipe the commands into sudo launchctl    The fundamental things to understand are    environment variables are inherited by a process s children at the time they are forked  the root process is a launchd instance  and there is also a separate launchd instance per user session  launchd allows you to change its current environment variables using launchctl  the updated variables are then inherited by all new processes it forks from then on    Example of setting an environment variable with launchd   echo setenv REPLACE WITH VAR REPLACE WITH VALUE   launchctl   Now  launch your GUI app that uses the variable  and voila   To work around the fact that    launchd conf does not work  you can put the following script in   Library LaunchAgents local launchd conf plist    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  UTF-8   gt   lt  DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC  -  Apple  DTD PLIST 1 0  EN   http   www apple com DTDs PropertyList-1 0 dtd  gt   lt plist version  1 0  gt   lt dict gt     lt key gt Label lt  key gt     lt string gt local launchd conf lt  string gt     lt key gt ProgramArguments lt  key gt     lt array gt       lt string gt sh lt  string gt       lt string gt -c lt  string gt       lt string gt launchctl  amp lt     launchd conf lt  string gt         lt  array gt     lt key gt RunAtLoad lt  key gt     lt true  gt   lt  dict gt   lt  plist gt    Then you can put setenv REPLACE WITH VAR REPLACE WITH VALUE inside    launchd conf  and it will be executed at each login   Note that  when piping a command list into launchctl in this fashion  you will not be able to set environment variables with values containing spaces  If you need to do so  you can call launchctl as follows  launchctl setenv MYVARIABLE  QUOTE THE STRING    Also  note that other programs that run at login may execute before the launchagent  and thus may not see the environment variables it sets

User · Answer

You can read up on linux  which is pretty close to what Mac OS X is   Or you can read up on BSD Unix  which is a little closer   For the most part  the differences between Linux and BSD don t amount to much    etc profile are system environment variables      profile are user-specific environment variables    where should I set my JAVA HOME variable     Do you have multiple users   Do they care   Would you mess some other user up by changing a  etc profile      Generally  I prefer not to mess with system-wide settings even though I m the only user   I prefer to edit my local settings

[macos] Environment variables in Mac OS X

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