Often times you run a command in the terminal and you don't realize it's going to take forever. You can open a new terminal, but you lose the local history of the suspended one. You can stop the running command using , but that may produce undesirable side-effects. suspends the job, and (assuming you have no other jobs running in the background) %1 resumes it. Appending & tells it to run in the background. You now have a job running concurrently with your terminal. Note this will still print any output to the same terminal you're working on. Tested on zsh and bash. Show Sample Output

After typing cd directory [enter] ls [enter] so many times, I figured I'd try to make it into a function. I was surprised how smoothly I was able to integrate it into my work on the command line. Just use cdls as you would cd. It will automatically list the directory contents after you cd into the directory. To make the command always available, add it to your .bashrc file. Not quite monumental, but still pretty convenient. Show Sample Output

This command will generate white noise through your speakers (assuming you have sound enabled). It's good for staying focused, privacy, coping with tinnitus, etc. I use it to test that the sound works.

While copying a large file that may take up a good chunk of your hard drive, start the copy and run this command concurrently. It will print out the disk information every second. It's pretty handy when you have a large copy with nothing to monitor the progress.