Meet FZF: A Fuzzy Finder to Enhance Your Command-line Workflow

How to use fzf for a better command-line experience

Image by the author.

If you are a regular terminal user, chances are you’re familiar with the fact that command-line search workflows can sometimes be impractical and usually transform into a multi-step process. For example, you want to kill a couple of processes using their PID, and the ps command output is longer than your buffer. You end up having to scroll up and maybe use your mouse to select the PIDs or use grep then execute the kill command.

This multi-step process hinders one of the advantages of using a terminal, which is relying mainly on your keyboard to save those precious seconds to improve your productivity. Moreover, it gives GUI tools users a reason to stay away from the terminal. Luckily some tools try to solve this issue, and fzf is one of them.

fzf is a command-line fuzzy finder that you can run on any system since it has no dependencies and is very fast. Furthermore, it is open-source.

Throughout this post, I’ll show you how fzf can improve your command-line workflow and maybe convince you to use the terminal more often.

Setup

Use one of the following methods to install fzf. For other operating systems, check out the official…