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fish shell
Raised as a usability problem by 81 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 43 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Fish syntax differs from bash, breaking scripts and commandsUnreviewed
20102026- Accidentally typing bash-style assignment in fish produces an error2025-07-21
- Mixing up syntax between Fish and Bash/Nushell2025-02-28
- Fish syntax differs from bash, so copied commands and muscle memory break and need constant remembering2024-12-29
Uses && syntax that doesn't work, unclear how to enable itUnreviewed
20102026- Fish lacked && and || syntax, forcing users to use and/or2021-07-29
- Uses && syntax but it doesn't work, unclear how to enable it2018-12-28
- Shell rejects && with an error suggesting 'and', though intent is clear2018-12-28
Tab completion suggests files not matching what was typedUnreviewed
20102026- Tab completion suggests files that don't match what the user already typed2025-11-03
- Autocomplete accepts with right arrow instead of expected tab key2022-11-23
- Tab completion throws errors when PATH contains a nonexistent directory2013-05-17
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Two-finger trackpad slide zooms instead of panning, so the user can't pan2026-04-15
- Tab completion suggests files that don't match what the user already typed2025-11-03
- Accidentally typing bash-style assignment in fish produces an error2025-07-21
- Mixing up syntax between Fish and Bash/Nushell2025-02-28
- Unfamiliar syntax takes time to learn2025-02-27
- Hard to remember which flags and scope names to use when not used often2025-02-27
- Non-bash-compatible features are hard to remember and inconvenient when copying setup instructions2025-02-27
- Very hard to configure the shell the way the user wants2025-01-27
- No set -e equivalent; must append '; or return 1' to every line2024-12-29
- Fish syntax differs from bash, so copied commands and muscle memory break and need constant remembering2024-12-29
- Ctrl+O no longer recalls the next history line, so rerunning a command sequence requires manually walking back through history2024-04-10
- Completion defaults are unhelpful and --help gives no useful quick summaries2024-01-03
- Scripting language is as unintuitive as Bash2024-01-01
- Must use set -Ux instead of export, which breaks sourced scripts like venv activation2023-08-27
- Bash commands given for help don't work in fish, slowing troubleshooting2023-08-26
- Breaks from POSIX just often enough to frustrate adapting shell instructions2023-02-09
- Autocomplete accepts with right arrow instead of expected tab key2022-11-23
- Autocomplete and fuzzy matching cannot be turned off2022-10-27
- Shell commands must be translated into bash to share them2022-04-10
- Bright red highlight when typing is distracting and can't be turned off easily2022-03-19
- Still can't get used to missing Ctrl-R history search after four months2022-03-19
- Old syntax made it unintuitive to put commands inside quotes2022-03-19
- Commander's muscle memory is POSIX-based, so fish's different syntax is hard to adopt2022-03-13
- Multi-line command line editing was not very intuitive to use2022-03-13
- Shell rejects familiar $(...) syntax with an error instead of running it2022-03-13
- Can't paste bash-style export commands from the web; syntax differs from other shells2021-11-26
- Output redirection doesn't work correctly inside Fish functions, making them unusable in some scripts2021-11-25
- Bash scripts run differently in fish/zsh, with subtle behaviour changes and weird error messages2021-11-21
- Hard to translate POSIX shell snippets from the web into fish2021-10-23
- Fish keybindings are extremely unergonomic for the user2021-10-21
- Fish lacked && and || syntax, forcing users to use and/or2021-07-29
- Default colors are garish and multi-line command editing interface jumps around2021-04-22
- Bash snippets must be rewritten to run in fish, a hassle during screen sharing2021-03-01
- Completion triggers automatically and interrupts the user's typing flow2021-03-01
- Colored text is distracting and makes it hard to read2021-03-01
- Tab completion hangs the shell for 10-15 seconds on macOS Big Sur2021-03-01
- Adding and removing PATH entries is opaque, requires constant lookup and is hard to do2021-02-18
- Couldn't figure out how to remap keys to Tab2021-02-13
- Couldn't figure out how to ignore certain file patterns in autocomplete2020-09-30
- Bash instructions don't carry over, so beginners must translate them to fish by hand2020-09-29
- Vi mode lacks command combinations like dt/ and d0, feels minimally usable2020-09-29
- Up-arrow history cycling skips the last match, which must be accepted with ctrl-f2020-09-29
- Blue syntax highlighting is hard to see on black backgrounds2020-09-29
- Stack Exchange examples are in Bash, so the user must convert them to fish2019-10-26
- Up-arrow skips the first matching history item; ghost entry needs right-arrow2019-10-26
- Vim bindings are lackluster and some keys, like 'e', behave inaccurately.2019-10-26
- History is split across two keys and UIs, so users can't tell which entry is most recent2019-10-26
- Pasting URLs into the shell requires manual quoting or escaping, which people find confusing2018-12-29
- Uses && syntax but it doesn't work, unclear how to enable it2018-12-28
- Non-POSIX syntax makes modifying the rc file annoying2018-12-28