For me fish got three things I can't live without anymore:

1. Sane defaults. I just 'dnf/apt install fish' and be done with it. It's not a configuration mess, I don't need to manage dot files. You actually never have to touch config files. Things like aliases and functions can be saved from CLI. For the most part it works like bash.

2. Alt+H to open the manpage for command under the cursor, without messing with the command line. Best. Thing. Ever!!!

3. Extensive tab completions, which provide descriptions. Most of the time I don't have to open manpages and just do 'cmd -[TAB]'.

History access is also much better. Alt+Up/Down lets you inject tokenized history, like last command's arguments.

The only thing I frequently miss from bash is '<<<' and 'sudo !!'. The latter is a matter of habit, since fish provides Alt+S to toggle sudo prefixing.

I do most scripting in bash, but only because it's idiotic fun to mess with the arcane like that every once in a while. Did you know you can manage TCP I/O in pure bash, via /dev/tcp/$host/$port? Bash is soo stupid and dangerous, impossible to remember or understand the next day, but great fun.

I've been using Fish as my default shell for over a year now, and it's so pleasant.

I still write scripts and more complicated pipelines in Bash, which has made the switch easier.

Frequently featured, related /w discussion:

4.0 release (312 points, 11 months ago, 106 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43194024

Fish 4.0: The Fish of Theseus (906 points, 2024, 201 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42535217

Fishshell rewrite-it-in Rust progress: 100% (201 points, 2024, 21 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39002291

Fish shell 3.7.0 released, the last release branch before the full Rust rewrite (128 points, 2024, 47 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38833609

Fish – Update on the Rust port (335 points, 2023, 156 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38423908

Fish – A friendly interactive shell (252 points, 2023, 162 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37272611

Rewrite it in Rust (375 points, 2023, 464 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34588340

Fish 3.6 (186 points, 2023, 23 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34298157

Fish Shell 3.5 (160 points, 2022, 71 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31768405

Fish 3.4 (194 points, 2022, 90 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30734072 + (131 points, 2022, 21 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30660587

The fish shell is amazing (447 points, 2021, 290 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29341390

Found Fish while looking for the ability to edit commands in a more text-editor style since I frequently need to edit LLM prompts.