You may need to refresh the command line shell for the change to take effect. How does this happen? Sometimes it can be running an incomplete or incorrect export $PATH command, a failure of adjusting environment variables, amongst other reasons. Note if the intended command you’re attempting to use is located in a nonstandard directory or in another location (/usr/local/sbin/ etc), you can always add that new $PATH at the command line to specify where to look if needed.īefore, where the “command not found” message shows up running simple commands line ls and cd:Īfter, with those commands working successfully as expected: Hit return and run your command again, it should work fine.īy the way, even though we’re focusing on Mac OS here, this same idea applies to other unix and linux varieties as well. You can check the $PATH with “echo $PATH” if you feel like it, otherwise you can just run the following commands to set the standard default path that Mac OS uses in the command line:Įxport PATH='/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin' The most likely reason why Mac users may unexpectedly see the command not found message in the command line is something went awry with the users $PATH, or the path where the command is located is not set. Fixing “Command Not Found” Terminal Messages in Mac OS with $PATH Setting If you simply entered the syntax wrong, entering it correctly resolves that, easy! Beyond that, we’ll start off with the most common reason, which is that the users $PATH is not set properly, or was reset somehow. the users $PATH is incomplete, or $PATH has been erroneously set, reset, or cleared – this is the most common reason to see a ‘command not found’ messageįortunately you can solve all of these issues and get the common working again as expected.

the command was deleted, or, worse, the system directory was deleted or modified.the command you are attempting to run is not installed.the command syntax was entered incorrectly.The four most common reasons why you may see the “command not found” message in the Mac command line are as follows: Why you see “command not found” error messages at the command line

Mac terminal commands path