I practically live in the terminal. For years, I was content with the standard BSD utilities that come with macOS—ls, grep, find, cat. They work, they’re everywhere, and I have the muscle memory for them.

But recently, I decided to overhaul my setup with modern alternatives, most of which happen to be written in Rust. I wasn’t looking for change for the sake of change, but these tools are legitimately faster, smarter, and just nicer to look at. They usually have sensible defaults (like ignoring .git directories) that save me from typing the same flags over and over.

If you’re on a Mac and want to freshen up your terminal workflow, here are the tools I’m using right now.

1. ripgrep (rg) > grep⌗

I can’t imagine working without rg anymore. It’s shockingly fast. The best part is that it respects my .gitignore automatically. I don’t have to tell it to skip node_modules or target folders; it just knows.

  • Install: brew install ripgrep
  • Try it: rg "search_term"

2. bat > cat⌗

bat is essentially cat with superpowers. It adds syntax highlighting and line numbers, and remarkably, it integrates with git to show added/modified lines in the margin. It’s great for quickly peeking at code.

  • Install: brew install bat
  • Try it: bat src/main.rs

3. eza > ls⌗

I used to use exa, but eza is the maintained community fork. It makes directory listings actually readable with colors and icons. The tree view is fantastic for quickly visualizing project structure.

  • Install: brew install eza
  • Try it: eza -la --icons

4. fd > find⌗

I never could remember the exact syntax for find. fd is simple: fd pattern. It ignores hidden files and gitignored patterns by default, which is almost always what I want.

  • Install: brew install fd
  • Try it: fd "config"

5. zoxide > cd⌗

zoxide changed how I navigate. It “learns” which directories I visit most. Instead of typing cd ~/Workspace/projects/my-app, I just type z my-app and I’m there. It feels like magic.

  • Install: brew install zoxide
  • Try it: z app (after using it a bit)

6. Starship (Prompt)⌗

I used to spend hours tweaking my Zsh prompt. Starship works out of the box and gives me exactly what I need: git status, language versions (Node, Rust, Python), and error codes. It’s fast and doesn’t lag my terminal.

  • Install: brew install starship
  • Setup: Add eval "$(starship init zsh)" to your ~/.zshrc

7. Delta (Git Diff)⌗

Looking at standard git diffs can be painful. Delta gives me a clean, syntax-highlighted, side-by-side view. It makes code reviews in the CLI actually pleasant.

  • Install: brew install git-delta
  • Setup: Add it to your ~/.gitconfig as the pager.

8. dust > du⌗

When my disk space is low, dust saves me. It gives a visual graph of where all my space is going, so I can instantly spot that one massive node_modules folder I forgot to delete.

  • Install: brew install dust
  • Try it: dust

9. tokei > cloc⌗

Curious how many lines of code are in your project? tokei is blazing fast and breaks it down by language.

  • Install: brew install tokei
  • Try it: tokei .

10. xh > curl⌗

I love curl, but xh is just friendlier for quick API testing. It formats JSON responses automatically and the syntax for sending JSON data is much simpler.

  • Install: brew install xh
  • Try it: xh httpbin.org/json

11. hexyl > hexdump⌗

If you ever need to inspect a binary file, hexyl makes it a lot less intimidating with color-coded bytes.

  • Install: brew install hexyl
  • Try it: hexyl huge_image.png

12. broot > tree⌗

tree is fine until you run it on a huge directory. broot gives you a tree view that fits on your screen and lets you navigate and search inside it.

  • Install: brew install broot
  • Try it: broot

13. yazi (File Manager)⌗

I’m usually a CLI-only person, but yazi is compelling. It’s a terminal file manager that’s incredibly snappy. It can even preview images right in the terminal, which is wild.

  • Install: brew install yazi
  • Try it: yazi

14. procs > ps⌗

procs looks so much better than ps. It gives relevant info like TCP/UDP ports, Docker container names, and memory usage in readable units.

  • Install: brew install procs
  • Try it: procs

15. bottom > top⌗

For system monitoring, btm (bottom) is my go-to. It looks like a dashboard from a sci-fi movie and is fully customizable.

  • Install: brew install bottom
  • Try it: btm

16. gping > ping⌗

Why look at scrolling text when you can see a graph? gping visualizes latency, which helps me visualize when my connection is jittery.

  • Install: brew install gping
  • Try it: gping google.com

17. bandwhich⌗

This tool is great for answering “what is using all my bandwidth?”. It breaks down network usage by process.

  • Install: brew install bandwhich
  • Try it: sudo bandwhich

18. zellij > tmux⌗

I’ve tried to learn tmux multiple times. zellij just clicked for me. It has a layout engine that makes sense and helpful shortcuts on screen so I don’t have to memorize everything.

  • Install: brew install zellij
  • Try it: zellij

19. hyperfine⌗

When I want to prove that fd is faster than find, I use hyperfine. It’s a rigorous benchmarking tool that handles warmups and statistical outliers for you.

  • Install: brew install hyperfine
  • Try it: hyperfine 'sleep 1'

20. tealdeer > man⌗

I rarely want the full man page. I just want to know how to use the command. tealdeer (a fast tldr client) gives me concise examples.

  • Install: brew install tealdeer
  • Try it: tldr tar

21. gitui⌗

Sometimes I just want to stage specific chunks of code quickly. gitui is blazing fast and lets me do complex git operations with just the keyboard.

  • Install: brew install gitui
  • Try it: gitui

22. Cargo Tools⌗

If you do any Rust dev, cargo-update is essential to keep your binaries (like all the ones on this list!) up to date. cargo-edit was so good its functionality is being merged into cargo itself, but checking for updates is still useful.

  • Install: brew install cargo-update
  • Try it: cargo install-update -a

23. so (Stack Overflow)⌗

Because leaving the terminal to search for an error message breaks my flow. so lets me search Stack Overflow right from the CLI.

  • Install: brew install so
  • Try it: so "how to reverse a string in rust"

24. ddgr (DuckDuckGo)⌗

Sometimes I just need a quick search. ddgr lets me query DuckDuckGo and open results quickly.

  • Install: brew install ddgr
  • Try it: ddgr rust cli tools

Switching to these tools has honestly made my time in the terminal more enjoyable. They aren’t just “rewrites”—they rethink how these tools should work in 2026. Give a few of them a shot; zoxide and ripgrep alone are worth the install.