Best CLI Tools for Developers 2026: fzf, ripgrep, bat, eza, and zoxide

The standard Unix tools — grep, find, cat, ls, cd — were designed in the 1970s. They work, but they were built for a world where codebases had hundreds of files, not hundreds of thousands. Modern CLI tools written in Rust and Go are faster, smarter, and more developer-friendly. Once you switch, you will never go back.

These five tools are the ones we install on every new development machine before anything else. They are all free, open-source, and install in seconds. Combined, they transform your terminal from a text interface into a productivity engine — especially when you run them inside one of the modern terminal emulators we recommend.

Why Modern CLI Tools Matter

Developers spend 30-50% of their time in a terminal. Every second saved on a search, every unnecessary keypress eliminated, compounds over months and years. The tools in this guide are not incremental improvements — they are order-of-magnitude speedups for common operations:

• ripgrep searches code 10-15x faster than grep
• fzf reduces "I know the file exists but cannot remember where" from minutes to seconds
• zoxide eliminates typing long directory paths entirely
• bat adds syntax highlighting and line numbers to every file preview
• eza shows Git status inline so you know what has changed at a glance

All five tools are written in Rust (except fzf, which is Go), giving them near-instant startup times and minimal resource usage. They respect your existing workflows — you can alias them over the original commands or use them alongside, and they pair naturally with the terminal multiplexers that keep your sessions organized.

Quick Overview

1. fzf — Fuzzy Finder for Everything

fzf is a general-purpose fuzzy finder that turns any list into an interactive, searchable menu. Files, command history, Git branches, processes, environment variables — pipe anything into fzf and fuzzy-search through it in real time. It is the single most useful CLI tool you can install.

What makes it essential: fzf's shell integration transforms three key operations. Ctrl+R becomes a fuzzy search through your entire command history — type a few characters from any part of a previous command and fzf finds it instantly. Ctrl+T opens a fuzzy file finder in the current directory. Alt+C fuzzy-navigates to any subdirectory. These three bindings alone save minutes per day.

Power use cases: fzf integrates with virtually everything. Use git branch | fzf to switch branches interactively. Use docker ps | fzf to select a container. Pipe rg (ripgrep) results into fzf to interactively narrow code search results. In Vim or Neovim, the fzf plugin provides fuzzy file opening, buffer switching, and grep integration. The preview window (--preview flag) shows file contents while you search, using bat for syntax highlighting.

Performance: fzf searches through 100,000 entries in under 50ms. The fuzzy matching algorithm scores results by match quality, recency, and frequency, surfacing the most relevant result first. It is fast enough that you never wait for it.

Install: brew install fzf (macOS), sudo apt install fzf (Ubuntu), or clone from GitHub. Run the install script to enable shell key bindings.

2. ripgrep — grep, But 10x Faster

ripgrep (command: rg) is a line-oriented search tool that recursively searches directories for a regex pattern. It does what grep -r does, but 10-15x faster, with smarter defaults and better output formatting.

What makes it essential: ripgrep's speed changes how you search code. Instead of navigating to a file and searching within it, you search the entire codebase and navigate to results. Searching a 10GB codebase with 500,000 files takes under a second. ripgrep achieves this through SIMD-accelerated regex matching, parallel directory traversal, memory-mapped I/O, and automatic binary file skipping.

Smart defaults: ripgrep respects .gitignore by default, so it skips node_modules, target/, .git/, and other ignored directories without being told. It searches recursively from the current directory. It uses colors for match highlighting. It shows line numbers. These defaults mean the basic command rg "pattern" does the right thing without flags.

Advanced features: ripgrep supports --type to restrict search to specific languages (rg --type py "import pandas"), --glob for file pattern filtering, --replace for find-and-replace across files, and -C for context lines around matches. The --json output mode integrates with other tools for structured processing.

Install: brew install ripgrep (macOS), sudo apt install ripgrep (Ubuntu), or cargo install ripgrep (from source).

3. bat — cat with Syntax Highlighting

bat is a cat replacement that adds syntax highlighting, line numbers, Git diff markers, and automatic paging. It supports over 200 programming languages and integrates with your terminal theme.

What makes it essential: Every time you run cat file.py to quickly check a file, bat gives you the same output with syntax highlighting and line numbers. This sounds minor, but when you are reading through configuration files, reviewing scripts, or checking log formats, colored syntax makes the content dramatically easier to parse. Git integration shows which lines have been modified, added, or removed since the last commit.

Integration: bat is most powerful as a preview engine for other tools. Set FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS="--preview 'bat --color=always --style=numbers --line-range=:500 {}' and every fzf file search shows a syntax-highlighted preview. Use bat as a pager for git diff with git config --global core.pager "bat --paging=always". The man command output can be piped through bat for colored man pages.

Customization: bat supports custom themes (including all VS Code themes via .tmTheme files), configurable styles (line numbers, grid, header, Git markers), and language-specific syntax definitions. The --plain flag disables all decorations for scripting use cases where you want colored output without headers.

Install: brew install bat (macOS), sudo apt install bat (Ubuntu — the command may be batcat), or cargo install bat.

4. eza — ls with Git Status and Tree View

eza (formerly exa) is a modern replacement for ls that adds Git integration, color-coded file types, tree view, and extended metadata display. It is the actively maintained fork of the original exa project.

What makes it essential: eza's Git integration shows file status directly in directory listings. Modified files show [M], new files show [N], and ignored files are dimmed. This means a single eza -la tells you both the file structure and what has changed — information that normally requires switching between ls and git status.

Tree view: eza --tree replaces the tree command with a colorized, Git-aware tree view. Add --level=2 to limit depth and --git-ignore to respect your .gitignore. The tree view is invaluable for understanding project structure without opening an editor.

Extended details: eza -la --git --icons shows file permissions, sizes (human-readable by default), modification dates, Git status, and file type icons in a single clean listing. The column alignment and color scheme make large directory listings easier to scan than the default ls -la output.

Common aliases: Most developers alias eza over ls: alias ls="eza", alias ll="eza -la --git --icons", alias lt="eza --tree --level=2 --git-ignore". These aliases are drop-in compatible since eza supports all common ls flags.

Install: brew install eza (macOS), sudo apt install eza (Ubuntu 24.04+), or cargo install eza.

5. zoxide — cd That Learns Your Habits

zoxide is a smarter cd command that tracks which directories you visit most frequently and lets you jump to them with partial names. Type z proj and zoxide takes you to ~/projects/myapp because that is the directory matching "proj" that you visit most often.

What makes it essential: zoxide eliminates the most tedious part of terminal navigation: typing long directory paths. After a few days of normal use, zoxide learns your directory patterns. z col jumps to ~/projects/maniginam/colony. z doc jumps to ~/Documents. z api test jumps to ~/projects/myapp/src/api/tests. The more specific your query, the more accurate the match. When multiple directories match, the one you visit most frequently wins.

Interactive mode: zi (zoxide interactive) opens an fzf-powered directory picker showing all your tracked directories ranked by frequency. This is the "I know I was working on something last week but cannot remember the path" escape hatch. It works especially well on machines with deeply nested project structures.

How it works: zoxide maintains a database of directory visits, ranked by frequency and recency (using a "frecency" algorithm). Each time you cd into a directory, zoxide increments its score. Directories you visit daily score higher than ones you visited once a month ago. The algorithm is the same one Firefox uses for the URL bar.

Shell integration: zoxide hooks into your shell's cd command. You can either use the z command alongside cd, or replace cd entirely with eval "$(zoxide init zsh --cmd cd)". It works with bash, zsh, fish, PowerShell, and Nushell.

Install: brew install zoxide (macOS), sudo apt install zoxide (Ubuntu), or cargo install zoxide. Add the init line to your .zshrc: eval "$(zoxide init zsh)".

Quick Setup Guide

Install all five tools in one command:

brew install fzf ripgrep bat eza zoxide

Add these lines to your ~/.zshrc (or ~/.bashrc):

# fzf key bindings and completion
source <(fzf --zsh)

# fzf with bat preview
export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS="--preview 'bat --color=always --style=numbers --line-range=:500 {}' --preview-window=right:50%"
export FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND="rg --files --hidden --glob '!.git'"

# eza aliases
alias ls="eza"
alias ll="eza -la --git --icons"
alias lt="eza --tree --level=2 --git-ignore"

# zoxide init
eval "$(zoxide init zsh)"

# bat as default pager
export BAT_THEME="Dracula"
export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"

Reload your shell (source ~/.zshrc) and these tools are ready. The entire setup takes under 2 minutes and transforms your terminal experience immediately. If you want to go further and swap even more of your daily GUI habits for the keyboard, our guide to CLI tools that replace GUI apps picks up where this one leaves off.

We update this guide as tools release new features. Last major update: June 2026. All tools are free and open-source — no vendor sponsored this article.