#10908·ohmyzsh

Shell command history is truncated to 10K commands on installation

Author: max-rocket-internetCreated May 3, 2022Updated Sep 6, 2026
LabelsBugArea: installer

Describe the bug

Shell command history is truncated to 10K commands on installation. Super annoying, especially for people who have long and rich command histories

Steps to reproduce

user@laptop ~ % echo $HISTSIZE
10000000
user@laptop ~ % echo $HISTFILE
/Users/temporaryadmin/.zsh_history
user@laptop ~ % wc -l /Users/temporaryadmin/.zsh_history
   66033 /Users/temporaryadmin/.zsh_history
user@laptop ~ % sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
Cloning Oh My Zsh...
remote: Enumerating objects: 1295, done.

<removed>

Looking for an existing zsh config...
Found old ~/.zshrc.pre-oh-my-zsh. Backing up to /Users/temporaryadmin/.zshrc.pre-oh-my-zsh-2022-05-03_11-50-17
Found ~/.zshrc. Backing up to /Users/temporaryadmin/.zshrc.pre-oh-my-zsh
Using the Oh My Zsh template file and adding it to ~/.zshrc.

         __                                     __
  ____  / /_     ____ ___  __  __   ____  _____/ /_
 / __ \/ __ \   / __ `__ \/ / / /  /_  / / ___/ __ \
/ /_/ / / / /  / / / / / / /_/ /    / /_(__  ) / / /
\____/_/ /_/  /_/ /_/ /_/\__, /    /___/____/_/ /_/
                        /____/                       ....is now installed!


Before you scream Oh My Zsh! look over the `.zshrc` file to select plugins, themes, and options.

• Follow us on Twitter: @ohmyzsh

<removed>

➜  ~ ls -d
.
➜  ~ echo $HISTSIZE
50000
➜  ~ wc -l /Users/temporaryadmin/.zsh_history
   10017 /Users/temporaryadmin/.zsh_history
➜  ~

Expected behavior

Don't truncate the history file or AT LEAST back it up

Screenshots and recordings

No response

OS / Linux distribution

MacOS 10.15

Zsh version

5.8.1

Oh My Zsh version

master

Terminal emulator

iterm2

If using WSL on Windows, which version of WSL

No response

Additional context

No response