this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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A while ago I made a tiny function in my ~/.zshrc to download a video from the link in my clipboard. I use this nearly every day to share videos with people without forcing them to watch it on whatever site I found it. What's a script/alias that you use a lot?

# Download clipboard to tmp with yt-dlp
tmpv() {
  cd /tmp/ && yt-dlp "$(wl-paste)"
}
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

jmpd(jump directory): fuzzy finds and opens directory with fzf

# fish shell
function jmpd
    set _selection $(fzf --walker=dir);
    if test -n "$_selection"
        cd "$_selection";
    end
end
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I have a collection of about 8 machines around the house (a lot of Raspberry Pi) that I ssh around to from various points.

I have setup scripts named: ssp1 ssp2 ssba ss2p etc. to ssh into the various machines, and of course shared public ssh keys among them to skip the password prompt. So, yes, once you are "in" one machine in my network, if you know this, you are "in" all of them, but... it's bloody convenient.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

alias cls=clear

My first language was QB, so it makes me chuckle.

Also, alias cim=vim. If I had a penny...

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

alias nmtui="NEWT_COLORS='root=black,black;window=black,black;border=white,black;listbox=white,black;label=blue,black;checkbox=red,black;title=green,black;button=white,red;actsellistbox=white,red;actlistbox=white,gray;compactbutton=white,gray;actcheckbox=white,blue;entry=lightgray,black;textbox=blue,black' nmtui"

It's nmtui but pretty!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago
function seesv
    column -s, -t < $argv[1] | less -#2 -N -S
end

I used this a lot when I had to deal with CSV files — it simply shows the data in a nice format. It's an alias for the fish shell by the way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

alias scr=screen -dRU

I don't know why Screen has any other flags. I do not want to bother learning the keyboard shortcuts for tmux even though its probably works better

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

To save videos from certain streaming sites that are not supported by yt-dlp, I catch the M3U playlist used by the page and with that I use this script that gets ffmpeg to put together the pieces into a single file.

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" == "-h" ] || [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
	echo Download a video from a playlist into a single file
	echo usage: $(basename $0) PLAYLIST OUTPUT_VID
	exit
fi

nbparts=$(grep ^[^#] $1 | wc -l)

echo -e "\e[38;5;202m Downloading" $(( nbparts - 1 )) "parts \e[00m"
time ffmpeg -hide_banner -allowed_extensions ALL -protocol_whitelist file,http,https,tcp,tls,crypto -i $1 -codec copy $2
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I have a few interesting ones.

Download a video:

alias yt="yt-dlp -o '%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s' "

Execute the previous command as root:

alias please='sudo $(fc -n -l -1)'

Delete all the Docker things. I do this surprisingly often:

alias docker-nuke="docker system prune --all --volumes --force"

This is a handy one for detecting a hard link

function is-hardlink {
  count=$(stat -c %h -- "${1}")
  if [ "${count}" -gt 1 ]; then
    echo "Yes.  There are ${count} links to this file."
  else
    echo "Nope.  This file is unique."
  fi
}

I run this one pretty much every day. Regardless of the distro I'm using, it Updates All The Things:

function up {
  if [[ $(command -v yay) ]]; then
    yay -Syu --noconfirm
    yay -Yc --noconfirm
  elif [[ $(command -v apt) ]]; then
    sudo apt update
    sudo apt upgrade -y
    sudo apt autoremove -y
  fi
  flatpak update --assumeyes
  flatpak remove --unused --assumeyes
}

I maintain an aliases file in GitLab with all the stuff I have in my environment if anyone is curious.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago
alias bat="batcat"
alias msc="ncmpcpp"
alias xcp="xclip -selection clipboard"
alias wgq="sudo wg-quick"

also a couple to easily power on/off my 4g modem

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago
$ which diffuc
diffuc: aliased to diff -uw --color=always
$ which grepnir
grepnir: aliased to grep -niIr
$ cat `which ts`
#!/bin/bash

if [ "$#" -lt 1 ]; then
                tmux list-sessions
                exit
fi

if ! tmux attach -t "$1"
then
                tmux new-session -s "$1"
fi
[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (4 children)

I use Clevis to auto-unlock my encrypted root partition with my TPM; this means when my boot partition is updated (E.G a kernel update), I have to update the PCR register values in my TPM. I do it with my little script /usr/bin/update_pcr:

#!/bin/bash
clevis luks regen -d /dev/nvme1n1p3 -s 1 tpm2

I run it with sudo and this handles it for me. The only issue is I can't regenerate the binding immediately after the update; I have to reboot, manually enter my password to decrypt the drive, and then do it.

Now, if I were really fancy and could get it to correctly update the TPM binding immediately after the update, I would have something like an apt package shim with a hook that does it seamlessly. Honestly, I'm surprised that distributions haven't developed robust support for this; the technology is clearly available (I'm using it), but no one seems to have made a user-friendly way for the common user to have TPM encryption in the installer.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I've only used aliases twice so far. The first was to replace yt-dlp with a newer version because the version that comes pre-installed in Linux Mint is too outdated to download videos from YouTube. The second was because I needed something called "Nuget". I don't remember exactly what Nuget is but I think it was a dependency for some application I tried several months ago.

alias yt-dlp='/home/j/yt-dlp/yt-dlp'
alias nuget="mono /usr/local/bin/nuget.exe"
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Nuget is a the .NET package manager. Like npm or pip, but for .NET projects.

If you needed it for a published application that strikes me as fairly strange.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I looked through my bash history and it looks like I needed it to build an Xbox eeprom editor for Xemu. Xemu doesn't (or at least didn't, I haven't used newer versions yet) have a built in eeprom editor and editing the Xbox eeprom is required for enabling both wide screen and higher resolutions for the games that support them natively.

I just looked at Xemu's documentation, and it looks like they've added a link to an online eeprom editor, so the editor I used (which they do still link to) is no longer required.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Ah, if you need to build a .NET project that makes sense

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

On MacOS, to open the current directory in Finder: alias f='open -a Finder .'

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)
git() {
  if [ "$1" = clone ]; then
    shift
    set -- clone --recursive "$@"
  fi
  command git "$@"
}
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[–] stringere 1 points 3 days ago

Currently using this to resize screenshots in a Word doc

#Requires AutoHotkey v2.0

^+1:: { Send "{RButton}z{Tab 3}4{Enter}" }

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)
alias gl='git log'
alias server-name-here='ssh server-name-here'

I have a bunch of the server aliases. I use those and gl the most.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You can also use ssh shorthands in ~/.ssh/config

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I do have the servers in ~/.ssh/config. I just got tired of typing ssh server and wanted the be able to just type server to ssh in.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Hey OP, consider using $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR instead of /tmp. It's now the more proper place for these kinds of things to avoid permission issues, although I'm sure you're on a single user system like most people. I have clipboard actions set to download with yt-dlp :)

My favorite aliases are:

alias dff='findmnt -D -t nosquashfs,notmpfs,nodevtmpfs,nofuse.portal,nocifs,nofuse.kio-fuse'

alias lt='ls -t | less'

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[–] brax 1 points 3 days ago

I don't have anything too fancy. I use [theFuck(https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck) to handle typos, and I have some variables set to common directories that I use.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (7 children)

I usually set up an alias or script to update everything on my system. For example, on Ubuntu, I would do this: alias sysup='snap refresh && apt update && apt upgrade'

And on Arch, I do this: alias sysup ='flatpak update && paru'

Funny enough you'd need to use sudo to run this on Ubuntu, but not in the Arch example because paru being neat

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)
# grep search the current directory
function lg() {
  ls -alt | grep $1
}
[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

it's somewhat vibe coded but the one i probably use the most is this one to swap between speakers and headset. the device name to look for is just put directly in there, it'd take some adjustment to run it on different machines. this is in my .bashrc:

# switch sinks
toggle_audio() {
  # Find headset sink ID dynamically
  headset_id=$(pactl list sinks short | grep "Plantronics" | awk '{print $1}')
  
  # Find speakers sink ID dynamically
  speakers_id=$(pactl list sinks short | grep "pci-0000_05_00.6" | awk '{print $1}')
  
  # Get current default sink
  current_sink=$(pactl get-default-sink)
  
  # Get current sink ID
  current_id=$(pactl list sinks short | grep "$current_sink" | awk '{print $1}')
  
  # Toggle between the two
  if [ "$current_id" = "$headset_id" ]; then
    pactl set-default-sink "$speakers_id"
    echo "Switched to speakers (Sink $speakers_id)"
  else
    pactl set-default-sink "$headset_id"
    echo "Switched to headset (Sink $headset_id)"
  fi
}

generally i try not to use too many custom things because for work i regularly work on all kinds of different servers and i've just been too lazy to set up some solution to keep it all in sync. someday....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I wrote this suite of scripts a few years ago and still use them to:

  1. Boot into Ventoy and select a Debian Live environment
  2. Optional: connect a storage device (local partition, USB drive, etc) for persistent storage
  3. Modify cfg/cfg.sh if it's the first time using the tool
  4. Run setup.sh to configure the environment into a familiar/productive state

The tools are flexible on hardware (more directed toward x64 systems at this time), and I (almost) never have to worry about OS upgrades. Just boot into a newer live OS image once it's ready. They are still a work-in-progress and still have a few customizations that I should abstract for more general use, but it's FOSS in case anyone has merge requests, issues, suggestions, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I alias traditional stuff to better, usually drop-in versions of that thing on computers that have the better thing. I often forget which systems have the better thing, so this helps me get the better experience if I was able to install it at some point. For example I alias cat to bat, or top to htop, or dig to drill, etc.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

g-push

git push origin `git branch --show`
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