your shell has a history of the commands you ran

some ways to access history:

• press the up arrow
• run history
• search it with Ctrl-R (in bash/zsh)
• use !33 to rerun lin 35 from history (bash/zsh)

how long does your shell store history for?

(sad face) in bash, the default is 500 commands (not enough!)

(happy face) in fish, the default is 256,000 commands

if you’re using bash, you might want to set HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE to stor more history

in zsh, it’s HISTSIZE and SAVEHIST

when does your shell save history?

by default, bash and zsh only save history to a file when you exit the shell

fish saves the history continuously

where is history stored?

bash: .bash_history

zsh: run echo $HISTFILE

fish: mine is in ~/.local/share/fish/fish_history

smiling stick figure with curly hair (thinking): “sometimes I copy over my shell history when setting up a new computer!”

history doesn’t include everything

usually it includes:

• the contents of the history file when the shell started
• the commands you ran in this shell session

if I want to use the history from another terminal tab, I’ll open a new tab

a useful history tool: atuin

atuin lets you:

• save unlimited history
• search history more easily
• save commands as soon as you run them
• sync your history (optionally)