11 Cool Command Line Programs You Need to See
Summary
TLDRThe video introduces viewers to a variety of useful command line tools that are free and often open source. It highlights Cheat, a tool for creating cheat sheets to remember other command line tools, and Ugreen NASync series for private cloud storage. The video also covers YT-DLP for downloading videos, ImageMagick for image manipulation, FFmpeg for multimedia file editing, and several other tools like Err.exe, ExifTool, Pandoc, PDFCPU, XPDF Tools, Tokei, and Hyperfine. The script emphasizes ease of use and the potential of these tools to enhance productivity.
Takeaways
- 📜 The video introduces 'Cheat', a tool for creating cheat sheets to remember command line tool usage.
- 💽 Ugreen NASync series, including the DXP4800 Plus, offers private cloud storage solutions with up to 96 terabytes capacity.
- 🎥 YT-DLP is a tool for downloading videos from YouTube and other sites, with a script available to simplify its use.
- 🖼️ ImageMagick is a powerful tool for manipulating image files, offering over 300 command line options.
- 🎞️ FFmpeg is a versatile multimedia tool capable of handling video and audio files, with an online GUI tool called FFmpeg Commander.
- 🔍 Err.exe is a Microsoft utility for looking up error messages in Windows, with a batch script available to enhance its usability.
- 🗂️ ExifTool allows viewing and editing metadata across various file types, with GUIs available for easier use.
- 📄 Pandoc is a document conversion tool supporting a wide range of file types and offering extensive customization options.
- 🖋️ PDFCPU provides various PDF manipulation features, including decrypting PDFs with restrictions on editing and printing.
- 📈 Tokei generates statistics about source code, offering insights into lines of code and language breakdown.
- 🏎️ Hyperfine benchmarks the speed of command line tools, useful for optimizing frequently used time-consuming tools.
Q & A
What is the primary purpose of the Cheat tool mentioned in the script?
-The Cheat tool is designed to help users create 'cheat sheets' to remember how to use other command line tools. It provides a convenient way to recall complex commands or workflows by offering a customizable and easily accessible reference.
How can users customize their Cheat experience?
-Users can customize Cheat by editing the corresponding text files in the 'Personal' folder within the cheat sheets directory. They can create their own cheat sheets with the desired content and naming conventions for better recall and personal use.
What is the Ugreen NASync series and what are its key features?
-The Ugreen NASync series is a line of network-attached storage devices. Key features include multiple SATA and NVMe drive bays for up to 96 terabytes of storage, high-speed transfer capabilities with 10 gigabit and 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports, a 12th Gen 5-core Intel Pentium Gold processor for multitasking and fast data processing, and a built-in Security Manager app for real-time data protection against malware.
How does the YT-DLP tool simplify the process of downloading videos?
-YT-DLP, or YouTube Download Plus, simplifies video downloading by supporting downloads from YouTube and many other sites. It offers a straightforward command-line interface and allows users to select desired video and audio qualities for download, streamlining the process and making it more user-friendly.
What are some of the capabilities of ImageMagick?
-ImageMagick is a powerful tool for image manipulation. It supports a wide range of functions including file type conversion, image resizing, and advanced editing features like drawing transformation matrix adjustments and Kuwahara radius applications. It offers over 300 command line options for image processing.
How does FFmpeg facilitate multimedia file manipulation?
-FFmpeg is a versatile tool that allows users to manipulate multimedia files, including video and audio. It supports a variety of tasks such as format conversion, audio track extraction or attachment, and application of effects like pitch shifting. Its popularity means that it's easy to find instructions for specific tasks, and tools like FFmpeg Commander can further simplify its use.
What is the Err.exe tool and how does it assist with error messages?
-Err.exe is a utility from Microsoft that helps in looking up error messages. When a user encounters a cryptic error code in Windows, Err.exe can be run with that error code to provide detailed information about the error, which can assist in troubleshooting and resolving the issue.
What does ExifTool allow users to do with file metadata?
-ExifTool enables users to view and modify metadata on various file types, not just images. It can handle metadata for a wide range of files, including EXEs, Word documents, and zip files. Users can remove unnecessary metadata or manipulate specific tags as needed.
How does Pandoc help with document file conversions?
-Pandoc is a document conversion tool that supports a vast array of file types, including word documents, PDFs, JSON files, and ebook files. It offers a high level of customization, with different options for each file type, and can be used for more than just straightforward conversions.
What are the main functionalities of PDFCPU?
-PDFCPU is a tool for manipulating PDF files. It allows users to perform actions such as extracting images or attachments, merging or splitting PDFs, adding watermarks, and removing certain types of permission restrictions, making it a comprehensive solution for PDF-related tasks.
What can XPDF Tools offer for PDF processing?
-XPDF Tools is a suite of tools focused on PDF processing. It includes utilities for converting PDFs into various formats like HTML, text, PNG, and more, as well as tools for extracting information from PDFs, such as images, attachments, and fonts.
What statistics does Tokei provide about source code?
-Tokei generates statistics about source code, including the number of lines of code, comment lines, and a breakdown by programming language. It offers options for formatting the output and controlling how the code is counted, providing valuable insights into the structure and composition of a codebase.
How does Hyperfine assist with benchmarking?
-Hyperfine is a benchmarking tool for measuring the speed of other command line tools. By running a specified command multiple times, it provides an average execution time and the number of runs, helping users optimize their workflow and understand the efficiency of the tools they use.
Outlines
🌟 Introduction to Command Line Tools
The paragraph introduces the audience to the concept of command line tools and dispels the common misconception that they are difficult to use. It highlights that many useful tools are free and open source, and sets the stage for the introduction of the first tool, Cheat, which aids in remembering command line instructions by creating personalized cheat sheets. The video also mentions a sponsor, Ugreen, and their NASync series of network-attached storage devices, emphasizing the benefits of private cloud storage and security features.
🛠️ Power of ImageMagick and FFmpeg
This paragraph delves into the capabilities of ImageMagick, a tool for image manipulation, and FFmpeg, a multimedia file handler. It explains how ImageMagick can perform advanced image editing tasks, while FFmpeg can handle a wide range of multimedia file operations. The paragraph also touches on the complexity of commands for these tools but assures that there are resources available, such as online tools and scripts, to simplify their use.
📊 Error Lookup and Metadata Management
The paragraph discusses tools for error message lookup, specifically Err.exe, and metadata management with ExifTool. Err.exe helps in understanding error codes in Windows, while ExifTool allows users to view and modify metadata across various file types. The paragraph also mentions the existence of GUIs for ExifTool and the practical uses of these tools for average users.
📄 Document Conversion and PDF Utilities
This paragraph focuses on document conversion with Pandoc and PDF manipulation with PDFCPU and XPDF Tools. Pandoc is highlighted for its ability to convert between numerous document formats, while PDFCPU and XPDF Tools offer a range of PDF-specific functionalities, such as extracting images and text, merging and splitting PDFs, and removing protection restrictions on certain PDF files.
🏃♂️ Benchmarking and Source Code Analysis
The final paragraph introduces two tools: Tokei for generating source code statistics and Hyperfine for benchmarking the speed of command line tools. Tokei provides insights into the quantity and language distribution of code, while Hyperfine measures the execution time of tools to help optimize their usage. The paragraph concludes with a call to action for viewers to share their thoughts and a mention of the sponsor's product link.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Command line tools
💡Cheat sheets
💡Open source
💡Ugreen NASync series
💡YT-DLP
💡ImageMagick
💡FFmpeg
💡Err.exe
💡ExifTool
💡Pandoc
💡PDFCPU
💡XPDF Tools
💡Tokei
💡Hyperfine
Highlights
The video introduces viewers to cool free software tools that are command line based and easy to use.
All the tools mentioned are free and most are open source.
Cheat is a tool that helps create 'cheat sheets' for remembering how to use other command line tools.
Cheatsheets can be customized and there's a collection of community contributed cheat sheets available.
Ugreen NASync series is a new line of network-attached storage devices with up to 96 terabytes storage capacity.
Ugreen NASync devices feature both 10 gigabit and 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports for fast data transfer.
The built-in Security Manager app in Ugreen NAS devices protects data in real time and prevents malware intrusions.
YT-DLP is a tool that simplifies the process of downloading videos from YouTube and other sites.
A script is available to make using YT-DLP easier through Windows PowerShell.
ImageMagick is a powerful tool for manipulating image files with over 300 command line options.
FFmpeg is a versatile tool for handling multimedia files like video and audio, with a vast array of commands.
FFmpeg Commander is an online tool with a GUI that helps generate FFmpeg commands for specific tasks.
Err.exe is a Microsoft tool for looking up error messages in Windows, with a batch script available to improve its usability.
ExifTool can view and change metadata on various file types, not just images.
Pandoc is a document conversion tool that supports a wide range of file types and options.
PDFCPU allows manipulation of PDF files, including removing permission restrictions without knowing the password.
XPDF Tools is a suite of tools for converting PDFs and extracting content like images, attachments, and fonts.
Tokei generates statistics about source code, including lines of code and comments.
Hyperfine is a benchmarking tool for measuring the speed of other command line tools.
Transcripts
Many people are missing out on really cool free software tools just because
they are command line based instead of having a graphic user interface. But in this video,
you'll see it's not so complicated. And some of the most useful tools are like this, yet still
easy to use. And I think you'll be surprised at how cool some of these are. Oh and of course,
all of these are free and most are open source too. So let's get into it. Alright, so I want
to start with this first one because it will make our lives easier for all the rest, actually. The
tool is called Cheat. And the idea is you create little "cheat sheets" to remember how
to use other command line tools. For example, say you want to convert a video with FFmpeg, but
can't remember how. You can just type "cheat ffmpeg" and it will show a list of examples
to help remind you. And you can customize this by editing a corresponding text file. The default
list for FFmpeg is pretty complicated. So what you saw was my own list. There's actually a big
collection of community contributed cheat sheets you'll have the option to download
when you first run it. Also, you can filter for commands that mention a phrase, for example,
by doing "cheat ffmpeg -s convert". And it only shows ones that say "convert".
I also made a batch script, which I can link to that makes it so I don't even need to use the
-s. It builds the command for me. So I can call that "c.bat" and then can just call
"c ffmpeg convert". And that works too. Cheats also has a whole tagging feature, but I'm
not going to get into that. To add your own cheat sheets, you just go into the "Personal"
folder in the cheat sheets directory and create a file with no extension with the name you want
to use, and just add text however you want it to appear. I might even create some cheat sheets for
some of the programs I mentioned in this video. So if I do, I'll put the links to those in the
description as well. Now, speaking of really cool things, let me tell you about a brand new set of
products from today's sponsor, Ugreen, and their upcoming line of network-attached storage devices,
the Ugreen NASync series. For example, here I have the Ugreen NASync DXP4800 Plus which sports four
SATA drive bays and two NVMe drive bays, allowing a maximum storage capacity of up to 96 terabytes.
This one is also equipped with both 10 gigabit and 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports and can reach transfer
speeds up to 1,250 megabytes per second when using fast enough storage like the pre-installed 128
gigabyte SSD. And with its 12th Gen 5-core Intel Pentium Gold processor, it has no problem with
multitasking and fast data processing for more responsive operations. With Ugreen NAS storage,
it's like having your own private cloud on your local trusted network, so no worrying about cloud
service companies spying or them having some data breach. And with the built-in Security Manager
app, it protects your data in real time and does scheduled scans to prevent malware intrusions. And
for speed, you can see here how much faster I can transfer files with my 10 gigabit local connection
to the NAS compared to my gigabit internet plan to some cloud service. Oh, and don't just think of it
as only a big storage drive. The operating system, UGOS Pro, allows a huge variety of functionality
through the all-inclusive App Center. Such as file syncing and backup with devices, photo,
video, and music with content searching, and a bunch of other apps. There's even an AI Smart
Assistant that runs completely locally and can intelligently identify photos based on places,
faces, and text. And again, the AI model is all run locally without connecting to the internet, so
no personal data is sent anywhere. So if you want your own private cloud storage solution with the
Ugreen NASync series, check out the link in the description where you'll get a whopping 40% off
the regular price for a limited time. Definitely check it out. And with all that being said,
let's continue. Okay, so now we can move on to cool tool number two, which is YT-DLP, short for
YouTube Download Plus. Like the name suggests, it lets you download videos from YouTube, but
also a whole bunch of other sites as well. Now, normally the commands for this can be cumbersome,
but fortunately for you all, I created yet another script for making it way easier. This one happens
to use Windows PowerShell. When you run it, you just paste in the URL of the video and it outputs
all the possible video and audio qualities, and then asks you how you want to download it. For
the most part, you'll just want to choose either one or two, and then it will start the download
and put it in a folder called outputs. It also supports playlists and allows you to change what
other parameters you want to use with YouTube Download Plus, but that's more advanced. Now keep
in mind, YTDLP has way more features than what my script supports. Mine is just to make it easier
for basic use, but you can look up on the GitHub repo for all the other options if you want to
get fancy. And there is a lot. Alright, next up we have an extremely powerful tool called ImageMagick
that lets you do pretty much anything imaginable in regards to image files. Yes of course,
you can do the basics of converting from one file type to another, like by doing "magick
input.jpg output.png", or you can resize by adding the parameter "-resize 50%"
for example. But would you believe that there are over 300 total command line options? And they can
get super advanced. For example, don't you just hate it when you find yourself needing to set the
drawing transformation matrix on an image? And I don't know about you, but it seems like every day
I need to apply a Kuwahara radius to one of my photos. Well, of course, ImageMagick can do that
and more. ImageMagick includes several separate executables, but you mostly just need magick.exe.
Previously specific operations required dedicated commands like "convert", but now you can
just do "magick input.jpg output.png" for example. For certain functions, direct
tools like identify.exe can still be used, like "identify input.jpg", or equivalently
through magick.exe, "magick identify input.jpg". This simplifies the process,
though awareness of both methods is beneficial if you see examples with the older methods. I could
spend hours on all the possible uses, but here are some common things I use it for. If I need to make
a jpeg file smaller, I can use the quality parameter which goes from 0 to 100, and try
lowering it as much as I can while making sure the visual quality doesn't drop too much. You can also
check to see what quality a jpeg file was saved at by doing "magick identify -verbose" on
an image, then looking at the quality value. This also shows you a whole bunch of other info you
probably don't need, but it's there. Next up is another extremely powerful tool that you probably
have heard of, which is FFmpeg, which is extremely popular and used by a ton of common software
behind the scenes. To put it simply, FFmpeg lets you do all sorts of stuff to multimedia files like
video and audio. This includes converting video and audio formats, extracting or attaching audio
tracks to a video, applying effects like pitch shifting to audio tracks, and really anything
else you can think of. That really doesn't even scratch the surface. Again, because it can do so
much, that means there's a ton of commands. So you'll often find yourself googling stuff like
"FFmpeg how to convert stereo to mono", but because it's so popular, it's usually easy to
find instructions. And funnily enough, there's actually an online tool called FFmpeg Commander,
which has a GUI where you can specify a bunch of stuff you might want to do to some files
with FFmpeg, and it will give you a command you need to use for that. So that can come in handy.
On to number 5, we have a useful tool by Microsoft for looking up error messages called Err.exe. If
you've ever gotten a weird error code in Windows with no description, this can help. I actually
made a whole video about this before that goes into way more detail, but basically you just run
the exe with the error code, and it spits out a bunch of info about it. Now hold on, because yes,
this looks like a mess, but what do you know, I also made a batch script to improve this too. You
just run the batch file instead using the same error code. If you haven't seen my other video,
this might not look any less confusing, but if you don't have time for that, you can just look
through these possible descriptions and see if any of them might be a clue to the problem. Next up,
number 6 is a program called ExifTool, which gets its name from Exif data, a type of metadata. This
lets you view and change the metadata on a whole bunch of different file types, and not just image
files, which are normally associated with Exif data. The full list of file types it can handle
metadata for is huge, even including stuff like EXEs, Word documents, zip files, and a ton more.
And actually there are various GUIs people have made that work with ExifTool, which are linked
from the official website. Some are more general purpose, like ExifTool GUI v6, but others are GUIs
for more specific purposes that just use a certain feature of ExifTool. Anyway, for the average
person, ExifTool has a few practical uses, such as removing all metadata that isn't absolutely
necessary, which can be done with this command. Or you can manipulate metadata tags on different
file types if you need to. You might not need to do this very often, but it's very handy when you
do. Alright, for number 7 we have a tool called Pandoc, which is able to convert between basically
any kind of document file type. I don't mean just word documents and PDFs, but also other data types
like JSON files, ebook files, and well, you can see the entire list for yourself. And of course,
it can do a lot more than what it just seems on the surface. The documentation is miles long,
because it supports a bunch of different options for each file type, some of which are unique to
that file type. Pandoc can be installed, but I prefer the portable version, which you can get
from the GitHub releases page. Then just look for the Windows zip file option, and you can extract
and run it from anywhere. Next up, numbers 8 and 9 are both sort of related, both having to do with
PDF files. And those are PDFCPU and XPDF Tools. For PDFCPU, this lets you manipulate PDFs in all
sorts of useful ways. For example, you can use it to extract all images or attachments from a PDF,
as well as stuff like merging or splitting PDFs, adding a watermark to a PDF, and a bunch more.
You can look at the full list yourself. But I think one of the coolest abilities is for when
you come across some PDF that you want to print or edit, but you can't because it has some dumb
permission restrictions and it stops you. Well, with one use of the "decrypt" command,
you can just remove that protection without even knowing the password. To be clear though,
there are two types of PDF protections. One is the kind that requires a password to even
open and see the file, and unfortunately you can't remove that because that's legitimately encrypted.
But for the kind that just restricts you from editing and printing, that's just a paper tiger.
And even when you go to save a file like that, Adobe Acrobat will warn you that other software
might not respect these restrictions at all. So that kind you can remove. Another major caveat,
apparently there's a new PDF standard called PDF 2.0, which uses a different encoding scheme for
protections that PDF CPU doesn't support yet. So if you try to remove a password on a more recent
PDF, it might say that it doesn't support PDF 2.0 encryption. They are adding more support for PDF
2.0 features over time though. So I'm sure that it will be able to eventually. In the meantime,
if all you need to do is print a protected PDF though, you could use something like Sumatra
PDF Reader, which I actually use myself. And that doesn't seem to care about restrictions,
at least for printing. As for the XPDF Tools, this is a set of a bunch of different tools,
each with a specific purpose, which their names describe. Several of them are for converting PDFs
into something else like PDF to HTML, PDF to Text, PDF to PNG, as well as these other less
common formats. PDFInfo shows you info about the PDF, no surprise. PDFImages lets you extract all
the images from the PDF. PDFDetach extracts attachments, and PDFFonts extracts fonts.
And of course for each of these, you have several options, like if you want to only extract certain
pages, that sort of thing. To download these, you'd go to the download page for a program
called XPDF Reader, but they have a separate download for the XPDF Command Line tools, which
are these ones that I showed. All right, we've still got a couple more and we're up to number 10,
which is a tool called Tokei. This one is simple, but cool. And it lets you generate statistics
about source code you've written or just have. So if I run it on my Spammer Purge app directory,
I can see that there are about 6,800 lines of actual code, almost 900 comment lines, and it
also breaks it down by language too. There's also other options for how to format the output and
gives you control over how it counts everything too. So just a neat little tool. Okay, finally,
at number 11, we have an interesting tool called Hyperfine, which is for benchmarking the speed
of other command line tools. So say I want to see how long it takes to run Err.exe as an example. I
do "Hyperfine" and then put in whatever command you'd normally use to run the other tool,
like the path to it and any parameters, then hit enter. It will run a whole bunch of times and
then spit out the results, in this case saying it averaged out at around 20 milliseconds, as well as
how many runs it did. I'm not sure I can think of when I'd use this beyond curiosity, but it might
be helpful if you want to optimize some other tool that you use often that takes up a lot of time,
by trying different settings or something. At least it's cool to know that. And that's
about it. I'd be curious which of these is your favorite and how many of these you already knew
about. And of course, if I missed any really good ones, let me know down in the comments and check
down there in case someone left a good suggestion. Thanks again to Ugreen for sponsoring. Definitely
check out the new Ugreen NASync Series through the link in the description, where you can get up to
40% off for a limited time. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a big giant thumbs up
for the YouTube algorithm. And if you want to keep watching, the next video I'd recommend is where I
talked about a whole bunch of cool portable free programs. Everyone loves those. I'll put that link
right there you can click on. So thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.
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