虽然这里的答案并不是“错误的”，但我还要补充一点:永远不要在OS X中改变影响“所有进程”的环境变量，甚至在shell之外，也不要影响给定用户交互运行的所有进程。

In my experience, global changes to environment variables like PATH for all processes are even more likely to break things on OS X than on Windows. Reason being, lots of OS X applications and other software (including, perhaps especially, components of the OS itself) rely on UNIX command-line tools under the hood, and assume the behavior of the versions of these tools provided with the system, and don't necessarily use absolute paths when doing so (similar comments apply to dynamically-loaded libraries and DYLD_* environment variables). Consider, for instance, that the highest-rated answers to various Stack Overflow questions about replacing OS X-supplied versions of interpreters like Python and Ruby generally say "don't do this."

OS X is really no different than other UNIX-like operating systems (e.g., Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris) in this respect; the most likely reason Apple doesn't provide an easy way to do this is because it breaks things. To the extent Windows isn't as prone to these problems, it's due to two things: (1) Windows software doesn't tend to rely on command-line tools to the extent that UNIX software does, and (2) Microsoft has had such an extensive history of both "DLL hell" and security problems caused by changes that affect all processes that they've changed the behavior of dynamic loading in newer Windows versions to limit the impact of "global" configuration options like PATH.

不管“蹩脚”与否，如果您将这些更改限制在较小的范围内，您将拥有一个更加稳定的系统。

$PATH变量也受制于path_helper，它反过来利用/etc/paths文件和/etc/paths.d中的文件

更详细的描述可以在PATH和Leopard(2008-11)的其他环境问题中找到。

布鲁诺正在正确的轨道上。我已经做了大量的研究，如果你想设置在所有GUI应用程序中可用的变量，你唯一的选择是/etc/launchd.conf。

请注意环境。plist不适用于通过Spotlight启动的应用程序。这是由史蒂夫·塞克斯顿记录的。

Open a terminal prompt Type sudo vi /etc/launchd.conf (note: this file might not yet exist) Put contents like the following into the file # Set environment variables here so they are available globally to all apps # (and Terminal), including those launched via Spotlight. # # After editing this file run the following command from the terminal to update # environment variables globally without needing to reboot. # NOTE: You will still need to restart the relevant application (including # Terminal) to pick up the changes! # grep -E "^setenv" /etc/launchd.conf | xargs -t -L 1 launchctl # # See http://www.digitaledgesw.com/node/31 # and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/135688/setting-environment-variables-in-os-x/ # # Note that you must hardcode the paths below, don't use environment variables. # You also need to surround multiple values in quotes, see MAVEN_OPTS example below. # setenv JAVA_VERSION 1.6 setenv JAVA_HOME /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6/Home setenv GROOVY_HOME /Applications/Dev/groovy setenv GRAILS_HOME /Applications/Dev/grails setenv NEXUS_HOME /Applications/Dev/nexus/nexus-webapp setenv JRUBY_HOME /Applications/Dev/jruby setenv ANT_HOME /Applications/Dev/apache-ant setenv ANT_OPTS -Xmx512M setenv MAVEN_OPTS "-Xmx1024M -XX:MaxPermSize=512m" setenv M2_HOME /Applications/Dev/apache-maven setenv JMETER_HOME /Applications/Dev/jakarta-jmeter Save your changes in vi and reboot your Mac. Or use the grep/xargs command which is shown in the code comment above. Prove that your variables are working by opening a Terminal window and typing export and you should see your new variables. These will also be available in IntelliJ IDEA and other GUI applications you launch via Spotlight.

/etc/launchd.conf在OS X v10.10 (Yosemite)、OS X v10.11 (El Capitan)、macOS v10.12 (Sierra)或macOS v10.13 (High Sierra)中不使用。

从launchctl手册页:

/etc/launchd.conf file is no longer consulted for subcommands to run during early boot time;
this functionality was removed for security considerations.

这个Ask Different answer中描述的方法适用于我(重启后):从Dock或Spotlight启动的应用程序继承了我在~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.startup.plist中设置的环境变量。(在我的例子中，我需要将LANG设置为en_US。UTF-8，用于Sublime Text插件。)

2月2022日(MacOs 12+)

这里的解决方案应该在重新启动或应用程序重新启动后工作。

CLI

打开所选配置文件的CLI。

为bash打开~/.bash_profile 为zsh打开~/.zshrc

添加(或替换)

export varName=varValue 

(如果varValue中有空格-将其包装成")

确保重新启动命令行应用程序。

GUI

完成CLI步骤。 确保GUI应用程序关闭。 从命令行打开GUI应用程序。例如:

open /Applications/Sourcetree.app

(你也可以在.zshrc文件中使用这个命令的别名)

原则

Mac没有为所有上下文设置环境变量的配置选项。 避免更改用户配置文件之外的任何内容。

已经不管用了

(MacOS 12.1+) 编辑/etc/launchd.conf 带有plist后缀的XML文件

除了建议的方法之外，还有一件事需要注意，至少在OS X 10.5 (Leopard)中，launchd.conf中设置的变量将与.profile中的设置合并。我认为这可能对~/. macosx /environment中的设置有效。plist也是，但我还没有验证。