A handpicked selection of the best developer tools.

Here are the best tool picks of this edition. Visit the archive.

In this edition:

• atuin – ✨ Magical shell history

atuin - ✨ Magical shell history

Visit atuin

If you’ve ever spent countless hours hammering the up arrow key in your terminal, desperately trying to locate that one elusive command you used weeks ago—this one’s for you.

Terminal history mastery is a cornerstone of developer productivity. By default, most terminals and shells let you use Ctrl-R to bring up an interactive search bar, allowing you to sift through your history of commands. It’s a game-changer that saves time, but why stop there? Enter atuin, the next evolution of shell history.

Why Use atuin?

Atuin supercharges your shell history, transforming it into a powerful tool for finding, organizing, and synchronizing your past commands. Here’s why it’s worth installing:

1. A Beautiful TUI for Easy Searching

Atuin comes with a sleek text-based user interface (TUI) that makes finding commands incredibly fast and intuitive.

2. Fully Encrypted History Synchronization

Need to access your command history across multiple machines? Atuin offers optional history sync, and all your data is fully encrypted, ensuring privacy and security.

3. Metadata-Rich Commands

Atuin doesn’t just log commands—it enriches them with metadata. For example, you can record additional context like execution timestamps, exit codes, and more, making it easier to locate what you’re looking for.

4. Advanced Search Queries

Take your command searches to the next level with atuin’s powerful query options. For example:

# Search for all successful make commands after 3 PM yesterday atuin search --exit 0 --after "yesterday 3pm" make

Pro Tip: Customizable Key Bindings

By default, atuin binds the up arrow key to open its fullscreen search UI. If that’s not your style, don’t worry—it’s fully configurable. Personally, I prefer to bind atuin to Ctrl-R for consistency with traditional terminal history search.

Atuin makes shell history more than just a convenience—it turns it into a productivity powerhouse. Whether you're debugging, revisiting past workflows, or just trying to save time, it’s a tool every developer should have in their arsenal.

Give it a try, and you might never go back to the default terminal history again.

See you in the next edition 👋🏻