Make Your File Chores Faster, Easier, and Safer with Terminal Tools + The Chat

If you do your job on your computer, you almost certainly do "file chores".?

Think of sending, converting, sharing, uploading, waiting for an upload to complete, resizing, compressing, timestamping, etc. File chores are digital tasks that aren't very generative, aren't directly related to your profession, but eat up a sizable portion of your workday.?

Whether you work with just text, audio, video, 3d modeling, or all of these, mishandling file formats, locations, and sizes can be a productivity nightmare. At worst, we end up like Dan Egan from Veep, who sent the wrong State of the Union draft to the president's teleprompter because the drafts were spread out over 5 computers, and he couldn't bring his USB stick on time.

Or let's say you have a visa photo in a .heic format. The gov website says it has to be a .jpEg, under 200KB. You have 10 minutes, otherwise, the application closes for security reasons.

You google: "heic to jpeg online converter" and click on the first result.?

At that moment, do you really want to submit your named face picture to https://FunkyShrekConvert3r.su? Probably not. But you do it anyway. Your data is compromised already, and then the website asks you to register for "exciting" premium features, such as downloading the photo in question.

You don't have to do this again.

Terminal + Chat = top match

Of all the things made easier by The Chat, digital chores like file conversions/resizing/compression have to be the No. 1. There's a command line tool for nearly everything. Ask GPT for guidance, and you will never have to use a crappy ad-infested online converter again.?

??*Command Line Warning*???

The command line, or terminal on Mac, is a powerful tool. It probably won't let you wreak havoc on your OS (watch out for sudo), but it will let you delete your documents without a warning. Learn the basic commands. When in doubt, make a copy of the file you're working on, and store it in a different location.

Watch out for:?

• rm - remove (does as it says)
• sudo - running commands with admin privileges, you should not need it for file chores
• mv - moves files, which is fine unless you put them in a location you don't know (like root)

You'd be best off looking at a quick cmd crash course, like this one. Once you learn it, it will be worth it. It will make your work faster and safer.

One more thing: if you're using a Mac, the one thing you'll need to install extra packages is homebrew. Download the .pkg file from here: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/releases/tag/4.1.22

On Windows, you can use Winget instead. This tutorial is slightly Mac-biased, but rest assured you can use the same or similar packages on Windows.

The Workflow (tl;dr: just ask)

Let's see what we can do.

You have this .heic file, right? Let's ask ChatGPT:

How can I convert my file called input.heic to a PNG smaller than 200 KB using command line on (PC/Mac)?

And here it goes with an answer. Not really rocket science, but wait to see just what you can do with this approach.

Sometimes the initial command will require you to install an additional package or two. That usually doesn't take long. More often than not, the right commands are already on your computer. Now let's get to some specific tasks you can accomplish with this workflow.

What you can do this way:

Bulk File Sorting (mv, cp, mkdir etc)

File?sorting?is?a?breeze?with?command?line?tools?like?mv?(move),?cp?(copy), and?mkdir?(make?directory). Here's?how?you?can?use?them:

- To?move?a?file:?mv?source?destination

- To?copy?a?file:?cp?source?destination

- To?create?a?new?directory:?mkdir?directoryname

Boring. But it gets useful when you learn the wildcard character (the * asterisk). Let's say you want to move all your pngs into a ~/pngs folder. (Looking at you, screenshot hoarders.)

You go:?

cd ~/Desktop
mkdir pngs
mv *.png pngs        

Done.

Bulk File Renaming

Here, the approach will look slightly different. Let's say you have a folder full of weird names of pictures from Google. You can number them like this:

ls?|?cat?-n?|?while?read?n?f;?do?mv?"$f"?"$n-$f";?done        

This?command?does?the?following:

-?ls?lists?all?files?in?the?current?directory.

-?cat?-n?numbers?each?line.

-?while?read?n?f;?do?mv?"$f"?"$n-$f";?done?reads?the?number?and?filename, then?renames?the?file?with?the?number?as?a?prefix.

Note?that?this?command?will?rename?all?files?and?directories?in?the?current?directory. If?you?want?to?rename?only?files, you?can?modify?the?command?like?this:

find?.?-maxdepth?1?-type?f?|?cat?-n?|?while?read?n?f;?do?mv?"$f"?"./$n-$(basename?$f)";?done        

This?command?uses?find?.?-maxdepth?1?-type?f?to?list?only?files?in?the?current?directory.

Video Editing (converting, cropping, speeding up, compression). (ffmpeg)

ffmpeg?is?a?powerful?tool?for?video?editing?tasks?like?converting, cropping, speeding?up, and?compression. Install it like:

brew install ffmpeg        

To?convert?a?video from mp4 to avi:?

ffmpeg?-i?input.mp4?output.avi        

To?crop?a?video. (Saved me hours of uploading and re-rendering):

ffmpeg?-i?input.mp4?-filter:v?"crop=out_w:out_h:x:y"?output.mp4        

• out_w: The width of the output video.
• out_h: The height of the output video.
• x: The horizontal coordinate (from the left) where the cropped area should start.
• y: The vertical coordinate (from the top) where the cropped area should start.

For example, if you want to crop a 100x100 area starting at coordinates (12, 34), you would use crop=100:100:12:34.

To?speed?up?a?video:?

• setpts=0.5*PTS stands for double speed here.

ffmpeg?-i?input.mp4?-filter:v?"setpts=0.5*PTS"?output.mp4        

To?compress?a?video:?

• -crf is a constant rate factor, where 0 is lossless, 23 is the default, and 51 is the worst quality possible.

ffmpeg?-i?input.mp4?-vcodec?libx265?-crf?28 output.mp4        

Image Editing (format conversions, compression, resizing) (ImageMagick)

ImageMagick?is?a?software?suite?to?create, edit, and?compose?bitmap?images. It?can?read, convert?and?write?images?in?a?variety?of?formats. This one doesn't come built-in, you can download it likewise:

brew install imagemagick        

To?convert?an?image from jpg to png:?

convert?image.jpg?image.png        

To?resize?an?image:?

convert?-resize?50%?image.jpg?image_small.jpg        

To?compress?an?image:?

convert?-quality?85%?image.jpg?image_compressed.jpg        

Audio Editing (sox)

sox?is?a?command?line?utility?that?can?convert?various?formats?of?computer?audio?files?into?other?formats. Install it like:

brew install sox        

To?convert?an?audio?file from wav to mp3:?

sox?input.wav?output.mp3        

To?change?the?global volume:?

sox?input.wav?output.wav?vol?0.5        

Document conversions (Pandoc)

Pandoc?is?a?universal?document?converter. It?can?convert?files?from?one?markup?format?into?another.

brew install pandoc        

To?convert?a?markdown?file?to?a?word?document:?

pandoc?-s?input.md?-o?output.docx        

PDF editing (resizing, splitting) (GhostScript)

GhostScript?is?a?high-performance?PDF?interpreter?for?editing?PDF?files.

brew install ghostscript        

To?resize?a?PDF:?

gs?-sDEVICE=pdfwrite?-dCompatibilityLevel=1.4?-dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook?-dNOPAUSE?-dQUIET?-dBATCH?-sOutputFile=output.pdf?input.pdf        

To?concatenate?PDFs:?

gs?-dBATCH?-dNOPAUSE?-q?-sDEVICE=pdfwrite?-sOutputFile=output.pdf?input1.pdf?input2.pdf        

Compressions (zip, tar, unar, bzip2)

Zipping / unzipping is very straightforward. In general compression tools are the simplest to use in a command line interface. It is still useful as occasionally it's impossible to extract an archive in certain formats through the GUI. If you have a Mac, you will need to do the following to unpack a .rar:

brew install unar #if not installed yet
unar archive.rar        

YouTube downloading (youtube-dl)

That was my biggest surprise. youtube-dl?is?a?command-line?program?to?download?videos?from?YouTube.com?and?other?video?sites.

brew install youtube-dl        

To?download?a?video:?

youtube-dl?video_url        

***

This list is not exhaustive at all. In fact, I don't even know 99% of the things the aforementioned tools can do. But it's stunning to see the kinds of knowledge that GPT unlocks for a very broad audience. What I sketched out here is a workflow with some pointers to help you make the best use of it, so that your files are safe - and your client gets the right .pdf.