<!DOCTYPE html><htmllang="en"><head><title>(POST) Why I Use Terminal Apps</title><linkrel="icon"type="image/x-icon"href="../../images/favicon.webp"><linkrel='stylesheet'type='text/css'href="../../style.css"><linkrel='stylesheet'href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css"media="all"><metacharset="utf-8"/><metaname="viewport"content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"></head><body><ahref="../../"><divstyle="text-align:center"><imgsrc="../../images/sufyaan.webp"></div></a><hr/><p><ahref="../../">sf.cu</a> > <astyle="color:#bd93f9"href="../">Blog</a> > <astyle="color:#bd93f9"href=".">Why I Use Terminal Apps</a></p><h1><iclass="fa fa-terminal"aria-hidden="true"></i>Why I Use Terminal Apps</h1><pstyle="font-size:110%"><strong><iclass="fa fa-calendar"aria-hidden="true"></i>13 March 2023</strong></p><pstyle="font-size:110%"><iclass="fa fa-clock-o"aria-hidden="true"></i><strong>5 min</strong><pstyle="font-size:110%"><iclass="fa fa-arrow-right"aria-hidden="true"></i></strong><astyle="color:#ff79c6"href="../linux"><iclass="fa fa-terminal"aria-hidden="true"></i>Linux</a>&&<astyle="color:#ff79c6"href="../software/"><iclass="fa fa-laptop"aria-hidden="true"></i>Software</a></p><p><em>“Ah, yes. Graphical-user interface (GUI) apps. They are so comfortable and easy to use. You just click some buttons and get your computer to do what you want.”</em></p><p>That was what I thought before I learned how spectacular terminal applications are. <strong>I do not use a calendar or email GUI app. I use its terminal equivalent.</strong> Specifically, I use Calcurse for my calendar/todo, neomutt for my email, sxiv for my image viewing, mpv for my video playing and even Joplin (CLI) for my notes. I am still actively looking for more apps like terminal file managers (lf, ranger, mc) and terminal versions of GUI apps I use (Bitwarden?). What compelled me to switch?</p><h2><iclass="fa fa-keyboard-o"aria-hidden="true"></i>The Right Tool For The Right Job</h2><p>Firstly, I realized that apps that allow me to use my keyboard and reduce mouse usage to as little as possible saved me a lot of time. By a lot of time, I don't mean a few minutes. I mean hours in the long run. Moving your hand to your mouse and clicking a button takes at least three seconds. Multiply that hundreds of times a day and 365 days an year. That leads to a lot of time wasted just moving your hand to your mouse.</p><h2><iclass="fa fa-plane"aria-hidden="true"></i>Fast. Very Fast.</h2><p>The speed of terminal apps have helped me get a lot more productive. Getting myself to start working immediately helped me a lot. I use Neovim for my text editor, and whenever I need to write text, its much faster to press a shortcut to open a blank file in Neovim than to open a GUI equivalent. It is also much faster to press a shortcut than to open my applications menu and search for my calendar app and wait a few seconds for the bloated app to open up. Terminal apps are just more lightweight. As a result, they operate faster and save me more than just a few seconds.</p><h2><iclass="fa fa-laptop"aria-hidden="true"></i><em>"Professionals Have Standards"</em></h2><p>CLI apps are more standardized. With a GUI, the procedure for solving an issue or using the application's functionality is similar to this:</p><ol><li>Click 'button1' on the top right.</li><li>Hover over 'dialogue2'</li><li>Click on 'button3'</li><li>Scroll down to 'setting4'</li><li>Change the value to False.</li><li>Click on Apply and OK.</li></ol><p>This is the sole reason that you see the terminal being used so much in Linux. It's easier to say “Open your terminal and type this” than to blabber a long list of instructions that will become redundant if the application in question decides to change their UI in an update.</p><h2><iclass="fa fa-low-vision"aria-hidden="true"></i>Run Them on a Potato!</h2><p>Due to the lightweight nature of the command line, your tools can run on just about any computer. It does not matter if your computer ha
