Apple - :wq command not found

It looks like there exists a line :wq in one of your shell’s profile files, such as ~/.bash_profile, which was probably added as a failed attempt at quitting Vim when editing such a file.

To edit the bash profile with TextEdit, run open -e ~/.bash_profile in Terminal. Edit the file to remove the :wq line only. Save it, quit TextEdit and restart Terminal to see changes. You might want to make a copy of the file in case you're worried: cp ~/.bash_profile ~/.bash_profile.bak.

If you don’t want to use Terminal at all, see this answer How to add the PATH for mysql bin on Mac? with instructions on how to edit a profile file only using GUI.


You messed up when editing .bash_profile with the 'vi' editor aka 'vim'.

You did your writing in insert mode, then when you finished, you were supposed to hit esc to exit insert mode, then : w q for command, write and quit.

You failed to hit esc so it inserted :wq as additional text. You then collected yourself, tried esc : w q one more time, and that worked.

Fire up vim one more time, opening the file as before.

  • Hit capital G to go to end of document.
  • With the cursor in the wayward :wq cline, hit "dd" lower case.
  • you shouldn't need to hit esc but do it anyway. It may beep.
  • now hit :wq