10 Homebrew CLI Tools Every Mac User Should Install

Your terminal is more powerful than you think. These tools prove it.

If you use a Mac and haven’t discovered Homebrew yet, stop reading and install it now at brew.sh. It’s the de facto package manager for macOS, and it opens the door to hundreds of tools that make your terminal dramatically more useful.

Once you have Homebrew, the question becomes: what do you actually install? Here are the ten tools that deliver the most immediate, tangible improvement to your daily workflow.

1. fzf — Fuzzy Finder

brew install fzf

This single tool might change how you use the terminal more than anything else on this list. fzf is an interactive fuzzy search tool that plugs into your shell's command history, file picker, and practically anything else that produces a list. Press Ctrl+R and instead of scrolling through history line by line, you get an instant, searchable popup. Once you use it, going back feels unbearable.

2. ripgrep — Blazing Fast Search

brew install ripgrep

Think of ripgrep (called with rg) as grep that actually respects your time. It searches recursively through files at impressive speed, automatically skips .gitignore paths, and handles binary files gracefully. If you've ever waited on a slow grep across a large codebase, rg will feel like a revelation. It's also the search engine that powers VS Code's built-in search.

3. bat — A Better cat

brew install bat

bat is a drop-in replacement for cat it prints file contents to your terminal but with syntax highlighting, line numbers, and git change indicators baked in. Reading a config file or script with bat is genuinely pleasant compared to the wall of monochrome text you'd get otherwise.

4. eza — A Better ls

brew install eza

eza replaces ls with a version that shows colour-coded output, file icons, git status per file, and a tree view mode. Alias it to ls in your shell config and you'll forget the original ever existed. It's one of those tools that makes you wonder why the default was ever so bare.

5. jq — JSON Processor

brew install jq

If you work with APIs, config files, or any kind of JSON output, jq is non-negotiable. It lets you filter, transform, and pretty-print JSON directly in the terminal. Something as simple as piping a curl response through jq . to get readable, colourised output saves minutes every day.

6. zoxide — Smarter cd

brew install zoxide

zoxide learns the directories you visit most and lets you jump to them with just a few characters. Instead of typing cd ~/Projects/work/api/src, you type z src and land there instantly. It builds a frecency index (frequency + recency) in the background and gets smarter the more you use it. Pair it with fzf for an interactive directory picker.

7. lazygit — Git in the Terminal, Done Right

brew install lazygit

lazygit is a terminal UI for git that makes staging, committing, rebasing, and resolving conflicts genuinely approachable all without leaving the terminal or reaching for a GUI app. You can stage individual hunks of a file with a single keypress, which alone is worth the install. It's one of those tools developers evangelise to their whole team within days of discovering it.

8. tldr — Practical Man Pages

brew install tldr

Man pages are thorough but brutal to read when you just need a quick example. tldr gives you community-maintained cheat sheets with practical, real-world usage examples instead. Run tldr tar and you'll immediately see the commands people actually use, not a specification document.

9. httpie — Human-Friendly HTTP Client

brew install httpie

httpie is what curl would look like if it was designed for humans. Syntax is intuitive, output is colourised and formatted, and authentication helpers are built in. For testing REST APIs or debugging webhooks from the terminal, it's far faster to reach for than constructing a curl command from memory.

10. ncdu — Disk Usage, Visualised

brew install ncdu

You open your Mac’s storage settings, see it’s nearly full, and have no idea where the space went. ncdu solves this. It scans a directory and gives you an interactive, sorted breakdown of what's taking up space, letting you drill in and identify the culprits in seconds. It won't delete anything without your say-so, but it'll tell you exactly where to look.

The Starter Pack

If you want to install all ten at once:

brew install fzf ripgrep bat eza jq zoxide lazygit tldr httpie ncdu

Start with fzf, bat, and lazygit if you want to ease in — those three deliver instant, visible impact with zero configuration. The rest will reveal their value the moment a relevant situation comes up.

Your terminal doesn’t have to feel like 1985. These tools are a good first step toward making it feel like home.