exa

Last updated Mar 31, 2023 Edit Source

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exa is neat as it shows pretty colors, optional git status, and icons. It’s part of the Modern Unix stack, supplementing the venerable ls.

I have it aliased to show git icons by default, because that’s kind of the selling feature in my case:

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alias exa="exa -l --git --icons"

I prefer lsd though, even though it does not have the same git feature, it is also pretty by default and its arguments are backward compatible with GNU ls, so you can keep all your existing aliases and muscle memory. Also, lsd is slighty faster (even without the git status), but that may vary on caching and whatnot — the point is that lsd feels snappier in my experience, and since typing l is kind of a habitual thing I type many times a day, that counts for something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.