Have you ever find yourself trying to tweak things for a better productivity setup or maybe because you’re lazy , so you’re trying to find a quick way to do things ?
I certainly been there.
I’ve gathered in #PRODUCTIVITY - CS posts everything I’ve
learned,found or come across From window managers, simple terminal aliases ,
shortcuts that will definitely make your life easier, scripts, and a nice setup
for quick and effective note taking.
I’ll be using a GNU/Linux (Arch) distro, any UNIX system will do the trick too!
1. Touch typing
Whatever you’re working at , you will be far more productive if you can type 20 wpm faster!
In short touch typing is a.comnique that helps you type faster and more
efficiently by using all your fingers.
A good touch typist does not look down at the keyboard when typing. This can help you reach typing speeds of over 60 wpm! Below are a few of the top benefits to touch typing.
Here are some great websites to help you with that:
- https://www.keybr.com/
- https://10fastfingers.com/typing-test/english
- https://github.com/lemnos/tt For terminal fan folks:
( A terminal based typing test written in go. )
2. Terminal
2.1 Fuzzy finder
You might find yourself typing cd and cd .. over and over again to go back
and forth, Or maybe your using a GUI file manager for that! The best solution
I’ve come across to open files, recursively search for a string in a file! And
do all the fancy (grep & find) stuff simply using a fuzzy finder .
fzf
fzf is a general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder.
Out of the box the fuzzy finder is very similar to the find command in any Unix based systems but certainly does more than that!
We’ll use this tool to quickly search and open any files with the appropriate software!
For example automatically open:
- images -–> feh ( image viewer )
- videos -–> mpv , vlc
- pdf -–> zathura, libreoffice
If you’re using the bash shell you can create an alias for this command or even a keybinding simply put this command in your :
$HOME/.bashrc # Or .zshrc (if you are using the ZSH shell)
If you just want to quickly open files use it with xdg-open
xdg-open opens a file or URL in the user’s preferred application. More info on xdg-open
xdg-open $(find ~ -type f| fzf)
More fancy way is to add -e argument (for command) and add some nice features,
open a terminal and paste this:
find ~ -type f |fzf -e --multi --bind 'ctrl-l:toggle-preview' --bind 'ctrl-k:change-preview-window(down,80%)' --reverse --pointer="->" --prompt="-->: " --preview 'bat -p -f {}')"
Or put it in your .bashrc file
# Creating an alias ( instead of typing the whole command every time ... simply type 'fopen')
alias fopen="xdg-open "$(find ~ -type f |fzf -e --multi --bind 'ctrl-l:toggle-preview' --bind 'ctrl-k:change-preview-window(down,80%)' --reverse --pointer="->" --prompt="-->: " --preview 'bat -p -f {}')""
2.2 Terminal aliases
Here are some aliases that will save you a lot of time:
# to quickly get the path of a file
alias getpath='find ~ -type f | fzf --reverse | sed "s/\.[/]//" | tr -d '\n' | c'
# Open whatever the last file you have edited (using vim)
alias lvi=`vim -c "normal '\''0"`
# Open the last edited files ( for either today or the last 24h )
alias today_files_24h='find -mtime -1 | fzf --reverse'
alias today_files='find -newermt $(date +%F) | fzf --reverse'
# Quickly get the wifi password (only for netwok-manager)
alias showpass='nmcli dev wifi show-password'
# Ips
alias myip="dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com"
alias ips="ifconfig -a | grep -o 'inet6\? \(addr:\)\?\s\?\(\(\([0-9]\+\.\)\{3\}[0-9]\+\)\|[a-fA-F0-9:]\+\)' | awk '{ sub(/inet6? (addr:)? ?/, \"\"); print }'"
alias localip="ipconfig getifaddr en0"
# Navigation
alias ....="cd ../../.."
alias ...="cd ../.."
alias ..='cd ..'
alias ~="cd ~"
alias cd..='cd ..' # correcting common typos
alias nz="$EDITOR ~/.zshrc" # quickly edit your .zshrc
alias nb="$EDITOR ~/.bashrc" # quickly edit your .zshrc
# Merge PDF files
alias mergepdf='gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=_merged.pdf'
2.3 Automation with bash && dmenu
dmenu is a fast and lightweight dynamic menu for X. It reads arbitrary text
from stdin, and creates a menu with one item for each line.
For more info’s on dmenu : https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/
Install dmenu:
git clone https://git.suckless.org/dmenu
cd dmenu
sudo make && sudo make install
We will use it to quickly run installed applications and search the web with a one click. Here is a simple shell script to do that:
#!/bin/sh
SEARCH=$(echo "" | dmenu -fn "Monokai Nerd Font:size=26" -p "")
check(){
if [ -z $1 ];
then
exit
fi
}
case $SEARCH in
y|[yY] | yt | youtube)
YTB=$(echo "" | dmenu -p "")
check $YTB
librewolf "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=${YTB}"
;;
w|[wi] | wiby)
WIBY=$(echo "" | dmenu -p "")
check $WIBY
librewolf "https://wiby.me/?q=$(sed 's/ /+/g' <<< $WIBY)"
;;
ar|ar|arch)
arch=$(echo "" | dmenu -p "")
check $arch
librewolf "https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?search=$(sed 's/ /+/g' <<< $arch)"
;;
esac
You can add as many websites as you want ! This way you can quickly and directly search your favorite websites without wasting time.
If you don’t like to open the terminal + the fuzzy finder you can use dmenu
for that too !
dmenu_open
#!/bin/sh
check(){
if [ -z $1 ];
then
exit
fi
}
choice=$(find ~ -type f | dmenu -i -p " Open File " -l 20)
check $choice
TERM="alacritty -e "
MUS="mpv --no-video"
EDITOR="nvim"
IMG="sxiv"
MPV="mpv"
PDF="zathura"
TAR="tar -xvzf"
ZIP="unzip"
case "$choice" in
*.tar.gz)
$TAR "$choice" &>/dev/null & disown;;
*.tgz)
$TAR "$choice" &>/dev/null & disown;;
*.mp4|*.mkv|*.webm|*.wav|*.ac3|*.wma)
$MPV "$choice" &>/dev/null & disown;;
*.mp3|*.ogg)
$MUS "$choice" &>/dev/null & disown;;
*.zip)
$ZIP "$choice" &>/dev/null & disown;;
*.jpeg|*.JPEG|*.gif|*.GIF|*.png|*.JPG|*.jpg)
$IMG "$choice" &>/dev/null & disown;;
*.pdf|*.PDF)
$PDF "$choice" &>/dev/null & disown;;
*)
$TERM $EDITOR "$choice" &>/dev/null & disown;;
esac
More
dmenuscripts can be found here