Top 20 Must‑Have CLI Tools Every Developer Should Use

CLI tools are indispensable for developers, serving as essential utilities that enhance productivity in the terminal. Below is a curated list of recommended command‑line tools.

1. Fish Shell

Fish Shell offers out‑of‑the‑box features such as syntax auto‑completion, syntax highlighting, and quick navigation between recently visited directories.

Download: https://fishshell.com/

2. Starship

Starship works with any shell; after a simple installation and a single line added to your shell configuration, it provides a smart, minimal prompt that shows git status, language versions, command execution time, and error information only when relevant.

Download: https://starship.rs/

3. z

z remembers your directory history and lets you jump to a folder with z folder_name, using a frecency algorithm to prioritize frequently and recently accessed paths.

Download: https://github.com/rupa/z

4. fzf

fzf is a fuzzy finder that lets you search files, command history, processes, git commits, etc., by typing partial strings and narrowing results interactively.

Download: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

5. fd

fd is a faster, user‑friendly alternative to the built‑in find command; it respects .gitignore, highlights output, and simplifies complex regex patterns.

Download: https://github.com/sharkdp/fd

6. ripgrep

ripgrep (rg) replaces grep with superior speed, rich colorized output, and convenient defaults for searching codebases.

Download: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

7. htop & glances

htop provides an enhanced, colorful interface for monitoring processes, while glances adds system‑wide metrics such as network, disk usage, sensor data, and resource‑intensive process lists.

htop: https://hisham.hm/htop/ glances: https://nicolargo.github.io/glances/

8. virtualenv & virtualfish

virtualenv creates isolated Python environments; virtualfish extends Fish Shell with commands to manage those environments quickly.

virtualenv: https://pypi.org/project/virtualenv/ virtualfish: https://github.com/justinmayer/virtualfish

9. pyenv, nodenv & rbenv

These tools manage multiple versions of Python, Node.js, and Ruby on a single machine, allowing per‑project version selection and isolation.

pyenv: https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv nodenv: https://github.com/nodenv/nodenv rbenv: https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv

10. pipx

pipx installs Python CLI applications in isolated environments, avoiding dependency conflicts and allowing direct execution without activating a virtual environment.

Download: https://github.com/pipxproject/pipx

11. ctop & lazydocker

ctop provides a top‑like UI for Docker containers, showing status, resource usage, and quick actions; lazydocker offers a rich terminal UI for managing Docker containers.

ctop: https://github.com/bcicen/ctop lazydocker: https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazydocker

12. Homebrew

Homebrew is the de‑facto package manager for macOS, simplifying software installation.

Download: https://brew.sh/

13. asciinema

asciinema records terminal sessions that can be replayed and allow users to copy code directly from the recording.

Download: https://asciinema.org/

14. colordiff & diff‑so‑fancy

colordiff adds color to diff output; diff‑so‑fancy further improves readability by highlighting changed words, simplifying headers, and removing unnecessary symbols.

colordiff: https://www.colordiff.org/ diff‑so‑fancy: https://github.com/so-fancy/diff-so-fancy

15. tree

tree displays directory structures in a visually appealing tree format.

$ tree .
.
├── recovery.md
├── README.md
├── archive
├── automator
│   ├── Open Iterm2.workflow
│   │   └── Contents
│   │       ├── Info.plist
│   │       ├── QuickLook
│   │       │   └── Thumbnail.png
│   │       └── document.wflow
│   └── Start Screen Saver.workflow
├── brew-cask.sh

16. bat

bat is a cat replacement that adds syntax highlighting, git gutter markers, and automatic paging for large files.

Download: https://github.com/sharkdp/bat

17. httpie

httpie offers a more intuitive, colorized alternative to curl for making HTTP requests.

Download: https://httpie.org/

18. tldr

tldr provides concise, example‑driven help pages that are quicker to read than full man pages.

Download: https://tldr.sh/

19. exa

exa is a modern replacement for ls with colorful output, git status integration, and human‑readable file sizes while maintaining similar performance.

Download: https://the.exa.website/

20. litecli & pgcli

litecli and pgcli enhance SQLite and PostgreSQL command‑line interfaces with auto‑completion and syntax highlighting.

litecli: https://litecli.com/ pgcli: https://www.pgcli.com/

21. mas

mas is a CLI tool for installing macOS App Store applications.

Download: https://github.com/mas-cli/mas

22. ncdu

ncdu provides a simple, fast way to analyze disk usage and free up space.

Download: https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu

These tools collectively cover a wide range of development and system‑administration tasks, helping developers work more efficiently in the terminal.