Setting up zsh completion

This guide walks through setting up conda tab completion in zsh.

Prerequisites

• conda 25.1 or later

• zsh 5.0 or later

Install conda-completion

conda install -c conda-forge conda-completion

Activate completion

Option A: automatic install

conda completion install

This detects the current shell and adds a delimited block to your ~/.zshrc. Preview with:

conda completion install --dry-run

Option B: manual setup

Add this line to your ~/.zshrc:

eval "$(conda completion init zsh)"

Verify

Open a new terminal and try:

$ conda install --<TAB>
--channel     -- Additional channel to search for packages
--dry-run     -- Only display what would have been done
--name        -- Name of environment

Tip

In zsh, descriptions appear alongside each candidate. Bash completion does not expose the same description field.

How it works in zsh

The generated script is a #compdef conda completion function. On each TAB press, zsh calls _conda() which invokes the Rust binary. Output uses grouped candidate:description items, which zsh’s _describe function renders with aligned descriptions.

Uninstall

conda completion uninstall