Top 20 Must‑Have CLI Tools Every Developer Should Use

Programmers rely on terminal CLI tools as essential productivity utilities; here is a curated list of recommended tools.

1. fish shell

Fish is an advanced shell offering features like autosuggestions, syntax highlighting, and shortcuts for switching between recent directories.

Download: https://fishshell.com/

2. Starship

Starship works with any shell; after a single configuration line, it provides a smart, customizable prompt showing git status, language versions, command duration, and error indicators.

Download: https://starship.rs/

3. z

z lets you quickly jump between directories by learning your navigation history; use z folder_name to switch, based on a frecency algorithm.

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.

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

5. fd

fd is a faster, user‑friendly alternative to find, ignoring hidden and .gitignore files by default and offering colorful output.

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

6. ripgrep

ripgrep (rg) is a faster, feature‑rich replacement for grep with sensible defaults and colorful output.

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

7. htop and glances

htop is a colorful, interactive replacement for top, while glances adds system‑wide metrics such as network, disk, filesystem usage, sensor data, and resource‑heavy processes.

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

8. virtualenv and virtualfish

virtualenv creates isolated Python environments; virtualfish adds similar management commands to the Fish shell.

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

9. pyenv, nodenv and rbenv

These tools manage multiple versions of Python, Node, and Ruby, allowing per‑project version switching 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 tools in isolated environments, avoiding dependency conflicts while keeping the commands globally available.

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

11. ctop and lazydocker

ctop provides a top‑like UI for Docker containers, showing status, stats, and quick actions; lazydocker offers a richer terminal UI for Docker management.

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 copied, making it ideal for coding tutorials.

Download: https://asciinema.org/

14. colordiff and diff‑so‑fancy

colordiff adds color to diff output; diff‑so‑fancy further improves readability by highlighting word differences and cleaning up 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 readable 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 clone with syntax highlighting, Git integration, and automatic paging.

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

17. httpie

httpie provides a more intuitive, color‑rich alternative to curl for making HTTP requests.

Download: https://httpie.org/

18. tldr

tldr offers concise, example‑driven help pages as a quicker alternative to full man pages.

Download: https://tldr.sh/

19. exa

exa is a modern, colorful replacement for ls that shows git status and human‑readable file sizes while maintaining speed.

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

20. litecli and pgcli

litecli and pgcli provide enhanced, auto‑complete, syntax‑highlighted CLIs for SQLite and PostgreSQL.

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 is a fast disk usage analyzer for the terminal, useful for freeing up space.

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

The list is extensive, and readers are encouraged to share additional useful tools.