Alternatives to fd
Finds files by name without the argument soup that find requires, and it is much faster. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
fd
Finds files by name without the argument soup that find requires, and it is much faster.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as fd.
Television
Search files and other data through a terminal fuzzy finder.
Television searches files interactively through a fuzzy finder with configurable channels, instead of fd's fast non-interactive name matching for scripts.
fzf
A fuzzy filter for any list: files, command history, processes, branches, anything you can pipe into it.
fzf filters any piped list interactively, so it can pick files by name, but it relies on another command to list them rather than traversing directories itself.
bfs
A breadth-first variant of the UNIX find command that stays compatible with common find versions.
bfs keeps the find syntax and stays compatible with GNU, BSD and macOS find, searching breadth-first, but has no native Windows support mentioned, unlike fd.
fselect
A command-line tool for finding files with a relaxed SQL-like query syntax.
fselect replaces fd's short pattern arguments with SQL-like queries, adding subqueries and aggregate functions, and also runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
plocate
A locate replacement that finds files by name in milliseconds using a trigram posting-list index.
plocate searches a prebuilt trigram index for near-instant name lookups, but it is Linux only and results are only as fresh as the last index update.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
ripgrep
Searches a whole directory tree for a pattern in a fraction of the time grep takes, and skips what gitignore says to skip.
bat
Like cat, but with syntax highlighting, line numbers, Git markers and a pager when the file is long.
Everything
A free Windows search tool from voidtools that finds files and folders by name instantly.
eza
A replacement for ls with colours, icons, a tree view and Git status in the listing.
zoxide
Learns the directories you actually use, so changing to one takes a few letters instead of a full path.
lf
A fast terminal file manager in the ranger style, as a single binary with no runtime dependencies.
