command-line Getting started with command-line Installing ZSH as default shell on macOS

Example

The simplest way is to use brew:

brew install zsh

After installation, you may want to set it as your default shell by doing:

sudo echo '/usr/local/bin/zsh' >> /etc/shells
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/zsh

If you have git, and required command line tools installed you can compile and install the latest version (5.2 as of this edit) as follows:

# clone the source
git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/zsh/code zsh

# checkout the required version, say, zsh-5.2
cd zsh && git checkout zsh-5.2

# check the documentation for help on configuration options
./Util/preconfig
./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
  --enable-fndir=/usr/local/share/zsh/functions \
  --enable-scriptdir=/usr/local/share/zsh/scripts \
  --enable-site-fndir=/usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions \
  --enable-site-scriptdir=/usr/local/share/zsh/site-scripts \
  --enable-runhelpdir=/usr/local/share/zsh/help \
  --enable-etcdir=/etc \
  --mandir=/usr/local/share/man \
  --infodir=/usr/local/share/info \
  --enable-cap \
  --enable-maildir-support \
  --enable-multibyte \
  --enable-pcre \
  --enable-zsh-secure-free \
  --with-tcsetpgrp

# compile and check if compiled successfully
make -j5 && make check
# you should see results of successful test scripts

sudo make install

Again, you can make zsh as your default shell by adding it to /etc/shells and using chsh as described above.