Getting Started

This will show you how to install mise and get started with it. This is a suitable way when using an interactive shell like bash, zsh, or fish.

1. Install mise CLI

See installing mise for other ways to install mise (macport, apt, yum, nix, etc.).

curl https://mise.run | sh

By default, mise will be installed to ~/.local/bin (this is simply a suggestion. mise can be installed anywhere). You can verify the installation by running:

~/.local/bin/mise --version
# mise 2024.x.x

• ~/.local/bin does not need to be in PATH. mise will automatically add its own directory to PATH when activated.

mise respects MISE_DATA_DIR and XDG_DATA_HOME if you'd like to change these locations.

2. Activate mise

Now that mise is installed, you can optionally activate it or add its shims to PATH.

• mise activate method updates your environment variable and PATH every time your prompt is run to ensure you use the correct versions.
• Shims are symlinks to the mise binary that intercept commands and load the appropriate environment

WARNING

Shims do not support all the features of mise activate.
See shims vs path for more info.

For interactive shells, mise activate is recommended. In non-interactive sessions, like CI/CD, IDEs, and scripts, using shims might work best. You can also not use any and call mise exec/run directly instead. See this guide for more information.

bash

echo 'eval "$(~/.local/bin/mise activate bash)"' >> ~/.bashrc

zsh

echo 'eval "$(~/.local/bin/mise activate zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc

fish

echo '~/.local/bin/mise activate fish | source' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish

Make sure you restart your shell session after modifying your rc file in order for it to take effect.

3. Using mise

INFO

Of course, if using mise solely for environment management or running tasks this step is not necessary. You can use it to make sure mise is correctly setup.

As an example, here is how you can install node and set it as the global default:

mise use --global node@22

You can now run node using mise exec:

mise exec -- node -v
# v22.x.x

TIP

Use mise x -- node -v or set a shell alias in your shell's rc file like alias x="mise x --" to save some keystrokes.

If you did activate mise or add its shims to PATH, then node is also available directly!

node -v
# v22.x.x

Note that when you ran mise use --global node@22, mise updated the global mise configuration.

~/.config/mise/config.toml

[tools]
node = "22"

Follow the walkthrough for more examples on how to use mise.

WARNING

Many tools in mise require the use of the GitHub API. Unauthenticated requests to the GitHub API are often rate limited. If you see 4xx errors while using mise, you can set MISE_GITHUB_TOKEN or GITHUB_TOKEN to a token generated from here which will likely fix the issue. The token does not require any scopes.

Set up the autocompletion

See autocompletion to learn how to set up autocompletion for your shell.