Reload .bash_profile without logging in again

If you have updated your .bash_profile you may want to reload the latest changes into your current shell & avoid logging out and back in.

The .bash_profile is actually an executable bash script. To reload it we need to load & execute it in the current shell. We can do that using the command source

At the prompt enter:

source ~/.bash_profile

This will load & execute the ~/.bash_profile file in the current shell.

Using an Alias

If you find yourself needing to do this often, you can create an alias to do this using a custom command, for example reload.

Add the following line to your .bash_profile or .bash_aliases file:

alias reload='source $HOME/.bash_profile

After running source ~/.bash_profile the command reload will be available to.