DEV Community: Arun Iyer

Useful CLI tools

Arun Iyer — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 09:36:12 +0000

I feel that customizing your terminal is like setting up your desk. And when you share your screen with a colleague or present your work, I guess it becomes an opportunity to come off as a cool person :P Here are some of the CLI tools and functions that I use -

🔍 `fzf` — Fuzzy Finder for Everything

fzf is a command-line fuzzy finder that makes navigating through files, commands, and processes much easier. It's kind of like ctrl + P on vscode, but for your terminal

Here are some practical ways to use it:

# Search through command history
cat ~/.zsh_history | fzf

# Find and kill processes
kill -9 $(ps aux | fzf | awk '{print $2}')

#  Navigate to subdirectories without typing the full path. fzf offers an interactive way to choose.
cd $(find . -type d -maxdepth 3 | fzf)

Install it via Homebrew:

brew install fzf

🧙‍♂️ Git Branch Management Made Easy

This function helps me switch between git branches quickly. This too uses fzf btw

# Add this to your .zshrc or .bashrc
gitco() {
  if [[ "$1" == "-b" ]]; then
    shift
    git checkout -b "$@"
  elif [[ "$1" == "-r" ]]; then
    shift
    git fetch --all
    git checkout "$(git branch -r | fzf | sed 's/^  origin\\///')"
  else
    git checkout "$(git branch | fzf | sed 's/^..//')"
  fi
}

# Usage:
# gitco -b <branch-name>  # Create and switch to new branch
# gitco                   # Switch to existing local branch
# gitco -r                # Switch to remote branch

💻 Zsh Plugins + Theme

You'll find tons of plugins and themes for zsh.
Here's what my ~/.zshrc looks like:

plugins=(
  git
  colored-man-pages
  colorize
  pip
  python
  brew
  osx
  zsh-autosuggestions
)
ZSH_THEME="bubblified"

🐮 `cowsay` + `lolcat` = Terminal Joy

This is probably the nerdiest and happiest part of my setup:

cowsay -f vader "Namastey Arun, May the force be with you" | lolcat --spread 1.0
 ______________________________________
/ Namastey Arun, May the force be with \
\ you                                  /
 --------------------------------------
        \    ,-^-.
         \   !oYo!
          \ /./=\.\______
               ##        )\/\
                ||-----w||
                ||      ||

               Cowth Vader
The sooner our happiness together begins, the longer it will last.
                -- Miramanee, "The Paradise Syndrome", stardate 4842.6

Yep. This runs every time I open a terminal. It did slow down opening up new terminal tabs/windows for me though.

Install them with:

brew install cowsay lolcat

You can check available cowfiles with:

cowsay -l

⚔️ `nvim`

I’m not a Vim expert yet, so I can’t justify using Neovim or SpaceVim. But here’s what I love: both are way more colorful out of the box and come with a bunch of built-in plugins that make the whole experience feel modern and powerful.
Plus, installing and managing plugins is much easier compared to classic Vim. Neovim supports plugin managers like vim-plug, packer.nvim, and lazy.nvim, which let you add, update, or remove plugins with just a few lines in your config—no more manual copying or setup hassles.

Install it:

brew install neovim

Set it as your default editor:

export EDITOR=nvim

`bat` — Better Syntax Highlighting for

bat is a modern replacement for cat that displays file contents with syntax highlighting, line numbers, and Git integration. It makes reading code and config files in the terminal much more pleasant and readable.

Sample usage:

bat myfile.go
bat --theme=TwoDark myfile.go
bat --line-range=10:20 app.js

`htop` — Interactive Process Viewer

htop is an interactive system monitor and process viewer. Unlike the traditional top, htop offers a colorful, user-friendly interface for monitoring system resources, sorting processes, and killing tasks interactively.

Sample usage:

htop
# Use arrow keys to navigate, F9 to kill a process, and F2 to customize the display

`tldr` — Simplified Man

tldr provides simplified, community-driven help pages for common commands. Instead of wading through lengthy man pages, you get concise examples and explanations.

Sample usage:

tldr tar
tldr grep

`thefuck` — Corrects Command Typos

thefuck automatically suggests and runs corrections for mistyped commands. If you enter a command with a typo or wrong flag, just type fuck and it will fix and re-run it for you.

Sample usage:

grpe myfile.txt
fuck

`exa` — Modern Replacement for ls

exa is a modern, colorful replacement for the ls command. It adds features like tree views, Git status integration, and better file listing formats.

Sample usage:

exa -l
exa --tree
exa --git

`z` — Quick Directory Navigation

z lets you jump to frequently used directories by typing just a part of the path. It learns your habits over time, making navigation lightning-fast.

Sample usage:

z projects
z src

If you have any favorite tools or configurations that make your terminal experience better, feel free to share in the comments!

Living a spam free email life

Arun Iyer — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 00:59:52 +0000

These days almost every website asks for a sign-up and if you notice, even the fancy cafes and other shops ask for your email. We don't really know what happens with our email ids. There is a possibility that these websites or shops are forwarding them to other people without our consent. This also leads to a lot of spams, making it hard to keep our inbox clean. However, there is a hack to fix these problems.

One way is to use Temp mail where signing-up for websites is mandatory and you only need to visit those websites once or twice. Temp Mail is a throw-away email service that provides temporary, free, and disposable email addresses. So you could just use it to sign in to any website and forget about the mail-id once you are done using it. This will help you keep your inbox clean and safe from these spammy websites.

Now, what if the website requires you to verify your email, or what if you need to fill in your mail id at some random shop, restaurant, company, etc. Well, in that case, you could use a Gmail trick to tackle these issues. The next time you give your email id to any of these places, use a mutated form of your email-id instead of your usual one. Gmail lets you add a '+' symbol to your first half of the email-id. For e.g, if your mail id is "luke1977@gmail.com", then you can use something like "luke1997+starbucks@gmail.com". The best part of this that you will still get the mail to your usual mail-id and this way you practically have an infinite number of email addresses. You could use this trick for a lot of things. It helps you track who is forwarding your email id without your consent. And in case, there is a chain of a certain company like Starbucks or something location-specific then you can use full stops as well. It can be something like "luke@starbucks.indiranagar.bangalore@gmail.com".

You can use email filters to automatically delete these spam emails or organize your emails better. The way to do it is to search for 'deliveredto: "luke+starbucks@gmail.com"' while setting up a filter on Gmail.

Useful chrome extensions

Arun Iyer — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 22:45:42 +0000

In this post, I’ll be listing down some basic popular chrome extensions I find really useful. I know it is not a big list, I shall add more with time.

Chrome is an amazing web browser but we all know it has its cons. It can eat up all your 8GB of ram if there are a lot of tabs open. Imagine having 8Gb of ram and working on Android studio along with 10 tabs open in chrome. The hack that I use to deal with this problem is an extension called The Great Suspender, it suspends the tabs after some time. It just replaces the current page with a local HTML page. And that’s about it, you just saved some memory for your system. Jai Shree Ram!
OneTab for reducing tab clutter in your browser.
Vimium is an extension that helps you manage your browser by only using your keyboard. Vim users will find it really helpful.
Grammarly helps with an error-free typing experience. It also shows you the mistakes for you to learn.
Duck Duck Go is great for privacy but the drawback is that it might not give you your desired search results. Duck Duck go enhancer integrates the search google button and movie rating system to duck duck go. Shout out to my friend Sayak who built this really useful tool.
Octotree helps you navigate within your GitHub repo codebase on the web.
Dark reader - This extension batmans every single thing on the website. Really useful when you work in Gotham low-light city.
Push bullet - Share attachments and text across your various devices with Push bullet. You can also use it to share things from chrome to your friend’s chrome. You can stop using the WhatsApp web for this.
Momentum - This is a nice aesthetic personal dashboard for your new tabs. It greets you with quotes and some good looking backgrounds. It also has a todo, weather, Google search, etc built-in integration. If you are looking for more productivity with todo, Taskade is your place
Focus mode - You can add a list of websites that messes up your productivity. Once enabled, it blocks all the mentioned websites for the time being.
I don't care about cookies takes care of your cookie pop-up warnings.
Notion Web Clipper helps you save useful websites directly to your notion.
HTTPS Everywhere is an extension which automatically switches thousands of sites from insecure "HTTP" to secure "HTTPS". It will protect you from people sniffing what you are browsing, and etc.

DEV Community: Arun Iyer

Useful CLI tools

🔍 fzf — Fuzzy Finder for Everything

🧙‍♂️ Git Branch Management Made Easy

💻 Zsh Plugins + Theme

🐮 cowsay + lolcat = Terminal Joy

⚔️ nvim

bat — Better Syntax Highlighting for

htop — Interactive Process Viewer

tldr — Simplified Man

thefuck — Corrects Command Typos

exa — Modern Replacement for ls

z — Quick Directory Navigation

Living a spam free email life

Useful chrome extensions

🔍 `fzf` — Fuzzy Finder for Everything

🐮 `cowsay` + `lolcat` = Terminal Joy

⚔️ `nvim`

`bat` — Better Syntax Highlighting for

`htop` — Interactive Process Viewer

`tldr` — Simplified Man

`thefuck` — Corrects Command Typos

`exa` — Modern Replacement for ls

`z` — Quick Directory Navigation