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fish_greeting(1)

fish_greeting - display a welcome message in interactive shells

FISH_GREETING(1) fish-shell FISH_GREETING(1)

fish_greeting - display a welcome message in interactive shells

fish_greeting

function fish_greeting

... end


When an interactive fish starts, it executes fish_greeting and displays its output.

The default fish_greeting is a function that prints a variable of the same name ($fish_greeting), so you can also just change that if you just want to change the text.

If SHELL_WELCOME <#envvar-SHELL_WELCOME> is set, it is displayed after the greeting. This is a standard environment variable that may be set by tools like systemd's run0 to display session information.

While you could also just put echo calls into config.fish, fish_greeting takes care of only being used in interactive shells, so it won't be used e.g. with scp (which executes a shell), which prevents some errors.

To just empty the text, with the default greeting function:

set -U fish_greeting


or set -g fish_greeting in config.fish <#configuration>.

A simple greeting:

function fish_greeting

echo Hello friend!
echo The time is (set_color yellow)(date +%T)(set_color --reset) and this machine is called $hostname end


fish-shell developers

October 12, 2026 4.9

fish 4.9.3-r2 · os · ingested 2026-10-13