Setting Terminal Encoding to UTF-8 on macOS and Linux

2 min readJan 12, 2023

When working with certain development tools, such as CocoaPods for iOS and macOS projects, it’s important to make sure that your terminal is set to use UTF-8 encoding. If the encoding is not set properly, you may encounter an error message similar to this one:

WARNING: CocoaPods requires your terminal to be using UTF-8 encoding.
    Consider adding the following to ~/.profile:
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

This warning message is telling you that the CocoaPods dependency manager for iOS and macOS projects requires the terminal to be set to use UTF-8 encoding. This article will provide you with the steps to properly set your terminal encoding to UTF-8.

When working with certain development tools, such as CocoaPods for iOS and macOS projects, it’s important to make sure that your terminal is set to use UTF-8 encoding. This can be easily accomplished by editing your system’s shell profile file.

Step 1: Open the Terminal

Open the Terminal on your machine.

Step 2: Edit the profile file

If you are running macOS and using zsh shell, In the terminal, type the command nano ~/.zshrc and press enter. This will open the .zshrc file in the nano text editor. If you are running Linux or macOS and using bash shell, In the terminal, type the command nano ~/.bashrc and press enter. This will open the .bashrc file in the nano text editor.

Step 3: Add the UTF-8 Encoding Line

Scroll to the bottom of the file and add the following line:

export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

This line sets the locale language to US English and uses UTF-8 encoding.

Step 4: Save and Exit

Press Ctrl + O to save the file, then press Ctrl + X to exit the editor.

Step 5: Apply the Changes

Type the command source ~/.zshrc or source ~/.bashrc and press enter to apply the changes.

Step 6: Restart the terminal

You might need to restart the terminal for the changes to take effect or alternatively you can open a new terminal. Or you can restart your computer.

That’s it! You’ve successfully set your terminal to use UTF-8 encoding on macOS and Linux for both zsh and bash shell. Your terminal is now ready to work with development tools that require UTF-8 encoding. Please be aware that if you change your shell in the future, this change might be undone, so you might need to reapply the instructions.