Fix: postgres command not found in the PATH

If you’ve installed Postgres.app on macOS but get command not found when running psql or other Postgres commands, the binary directory isn’t in your PATH.

Fix

Step 1: Add Postgres binaries to your PATH

Run this in your terminal (replacing 12 with your installed Postgres version):

export PATH=$PATH:/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/12/bin

To make this permanent, add the line to your shell config file (~/.zshrc for Zsh, ~/.bash_profile for Bash):

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/12/bin' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Step 2: Verify

psql --version

You should see the Postgres version output without any error.

Bonus: Install the pg Ruby gem

If you’re also getting errors installing the pg gem in a Rails project after fixing the PATH:

gem install pg -v '1.2.2' --source 'https://rubygems.org/'