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I have moved to macbook pro from linux recently and I do have quite a big bash history (over 200000 commands).

Unfortunately while using bash history in macOS I have noticed that if I pipe history command output to any external command (e.g. history|grep blablabla) things become quite slow.

Anyone else noticed the same behavior or may be can suggest a fix?

My setup:

$ uname -a
Darwin ak-mac 25.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 25.0.0: Wed Sep 17 21:42:08 PDT 2025; root:xnu-12377.1.9~141/RELEASE_ARM64_T8132 arm64
$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 5.3.3(1)-release (aarch64-apple-darwin25.0.0)
$ set|grep ^HIST
HISTFILE=/Users/scz/.bash_history
HISTFILESIZE=1000000000
HISTSIZE=1000000000
HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T '
$ echo $HISTCMD
204604

This works pretty fast:

$ time history
.......

real    0m0.670s
user    0m0.226s
sys 0m0.200s

This too:

$ time wc -l .bash_history
  243708 .bash_history

real    0m0.027s
user    0m0.019s
sys 0m0.008s

And if I pipe history command I get the problem:

$ time history|wc -l
  204609

real    0m51.708s
user    0m15.449s
sys 0m36.916s

P.S. The workaround I don't really like:

$ time bash -i -c "set -o history; history" |wc -l
  204944

real    0m0.459s
user    0m0.331s
sys 0m0.325s

Thanks a lot for your help!

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  • What happens if you use the system bash (/bin/bash)? Commented Nov 8, 2025 at 17:26
  • @LincDavis I do use system bash (/bin/bash). I didn't install it myself (only bash-completion@2 via brew) Commented Nov 8, 2025 at 17:41
  • You are not using system bash (/bin/bash is GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release or similar), assume installing bash-completion automatically installed bash as well. But I doubt this is the issue. As a side note, I switched to Atuin a while ago which makes handling of large histories way easier. Commented Nov 8, 2025 at 18:33
  • That's a different version of bash that you installed, maybe without realizing it. Please try the command with the full path. Commented Nov 8, 2025 at 21:43
  • You are right, I really did install it. Nevertheless the problem is the same with macOS default bash (GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (arm64-apple-darwin25)) @nohillside thanks for the advice, but unfortunately I can not use Atuin or any other bash history replacement software Commented Nov 8, 2025 at 22:34

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