---
title: "I Installed These 4 Unorthodox Command Line Tools To Revamp My Terminal Experience"
source: "https://levelup.gitconnected.com/i-installed-these-4-unorthodox-command-line-tools-to-revamp-my-terminal-experience-68dcd07ed161"
author:
  - "[[Rishabh Agarwal]]"
published: 2024-10-06
created: 2024-10-29
description: "Terminals have been around for more than 75 years now and in this period a number of tools have been developed to simplify the day-to-day job of a person working with them. Many tools like ls, cat…"
tags:
  - "clippings"
---
## Discover How These Unique Tools Breathe New Life into a Classic Interface

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![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*mNik76xZThyvFavj-UG0qw.png)

> Terminals are almost as old as the computers!

Terminals have been around for more than 75 years now and in this period a number of tools have been developed to simplify the day-to-day job of a person working with them. Many tools like `ls`, `cat`, `pwd`, and `grep` have become so common that working without them is unimaginable.

Most of these commonly used tools were developed decades ago when computers were totally different from what we know them today. But such was the versatility of these tools that they are still useful after years of their development.

While most existing tools work well, the software community has developed a plethora of new options in recent years to elevate our terminal experience.

I recently installed 4 such tools and since then found them greatly useful when working on terminal. Let us talk about them.

## bat — A cat clone with wings

The [bat](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat) tool is a clone of famous cat program with support for syntax highlighting and git integration.

Conveniently, using `bat` is similar to using the `cat` program.

```
~ sudo apt install bat  ~ brew install bat 
```

A detailed guide for installing it on various distribution is provided [here](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat?tab=readme-ov-file#installation).

## Ultimate Plumber — Tool for crafting Linux Pipes

`up`, or the **Ultimate Plumber**, is a tool for writing Linux pipes in a terminal-based UI interactively, with instant live preview of command results.

The primary goal of **Ultimate Plumber** is to facilitate interactive and incremental exploration of textual data in Linux. It simplifies the process of building complex pipelines with a fast feedback loop. This is accomplished by enhancing traditional Linux text-processing utilities — such as *grep*, *sort*, *cut*, *paste*, *awk*, *wc*, and *perl* — by offering a quick, interactive, and scrollable preview of their results.

![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/0*_p8IaNvncAob_gQp.gif)

To install the Ultimate Plumber on MacOS, we can use brew as follows.

```
~ brew install up
```

Other methods to download and use this tool can be found [here](https://github.com/akavel/up?tab=readme-ov-file#usage).

## asciinema — Terminal Session Recorder

The **asciinema** (aka asciinema CLI or asciinema recorder) is a command-line tool for recording terminal sessions.

Unlike typical *screen* recording software, which records visual output of a screen into a heavyweight video files (`.mp4`, `.mov`), asciinema recorder runs *inside a terminal*, capturing terminal session output into a lightweight recording files in the [asciicast](https://docs.asciinema.org/manual/asciicast/v2/) format (`.cast`).

![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/0*wvldG1kt5NDftBoU.gif)

To record a session run this command in your shell:

```
asciinema rec demo.cast
```

The installation guidelines for asciinema can be found [here](https://docs.asciinema.org/manual/cli/installation/).

## navi — Cheatsheet for Command Line

[navi](https://github.com/denisidoro/navi) allows you to browse through cheatsheets (that you may write yourself or download from maintainers) and execute commands.

The great thing is that there are a number of repo for common commands like `git`, `kubectl`, and `docker`. Here are some of the benefits of using this tool ~

- it will spare you from knowing CLIs by heart
- it will spare you from copy-pasting output from intermediate commands
- it will make you type less
- it will teach you new one-liners

The recommended way to install navi is using brew.

```
~ brew install navi
```
![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/0*Uxvlkdqct5ExxYg9.gif)