.profile vs. .zprofile Zsh runs ~/.zprofile, not ~/.profile, when it is invoked as a login shell. The reason is that zsh has enough incompatibilities with standard shells to break scripts. Zsh does run ~/.profile if it is called as sh or ksh. But if your objective is to get a zsh prompt when you log in, that's no help. You can make /bin/sh your login shell and include export SHELL=/bin/zsh in your