eza

modern replacement for ls. supports git integration, tree view, icons, and relative timestamps.

installed via: brew install eza

aliases:

alias ls="eza --long --oneline --no-permissions --no-user --smart-group --git --git-repos --sort=modified --time=modified --time-style=relative"
alias ll="eza --long --no-permissions --no-user --smart-group --git --git-repos --tree --level=2 -a --sort=modified --time=modified --time-style=relative"

design choices:

• sorted by modification time (most recent first) — what you care about is what changed last
• relative timestamps ("2 hours ago") instead of absolute dates
• no permissions/user columns — on a personal machine, that's noise
• ll adds tree view at 2 levels deep with hidden files

part of the shell navigation stack: eza for listing, yazi for browsing, fzf for searching, zoxide for jumping. eza is the quickest glance — you see it every time you land in a directory.