history -d does not remove history entry, but shows time of history entry

Solution 1:

The history man page you are referring to applies to the Bash shell, but you seem to be using Zsh, that's why the behavior differs.

history is a shell builtin

Why is the shell you run relevant? Because history is a shell builtin command, that is, it is not an external executable file installed on your Mac, but a command integrated in the shell.

Zsh and history

If you check man zsh you will find that history is an alias for fc -l:

history
   Same as fc -l

and:

fc
   The fc command controls the interactive history mechanism.
   When the -l flag is given, the resulting events are listed on standard output.

and -d is one of the options available to fc:

   -d     prints timestamps for each event

which is exactly the behavior you get.

Equivalent of history -d in Zsh

Unfortunately, fc doesn't include an option to delete lines in the history file, but there are workarounds, for example, check this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/63494771.

Bash as default shell

If you'd like to use Bash instead of Zsh in Terminal:

1. Launch Terminal
2. Open the Preferences window by pressing Command,
3. Select Shells open with Command and type /bin/bash:

IMPORTANT: The Bash version included with macOS is quite old (as of macOS Catalina, the default shell in macOS is Zsh and Bash is deprecated), so if you plan on using Bash regularly, I'd recommend that you install Brew and then Bash.