fd
Hacker ApprovedRanked 16 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
People recommend fd as a faster, more intuitive replacement for find that respects .gitignore by default. Some note it cannot see files with malformed UTF-8.
People recommend fd as a faster, more intuitive replacement for find that respects .gitignore by default. Some note it cannot see files with malformed UTF-8.
23 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 20
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 87%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 20 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 6.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Intuitive, pleasant to use
“a much faster find with an interface that actually fits how people tend to use the tool”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 on Hacker News “Being able to use them intuitively trumps ubiquity, speed or features.”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Snitch – A friendlier ss/netstat” “a modern replacement that’s a bit friendlier to use”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “Small programming tricks” - Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Rewriting in Rust”
- Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “Snitch – A friendlier ss/netstat”
Faster and easier than find
“a much faster find with an interface that actually fits how people tend to use the tool”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 on Hacker News “now moved everything to just rg+fd+cd+ls, much faster, easier, etc.”
Comment from 4 Apr 2026 in “We replaced RAG with a virtual filesystem for our AI documentation assistant” “find is absolute agony once you get a taste of fd.”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Small programming tricks” - Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Make.ts”
Preferred over find and grep
“I personally use `fd` and ripgrep more often than `find` these days.”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Why I (Still) Love Linux ?” “It is a big reason to why I prefer rg and fd over grep and find.”
Comment from 26 Mar 2026 in “Ripgrep is faster than {grep, ag, Git grep, ucg, pt, sift}” Good with LLM agents
“It's amazing the scripts your LLM can make you with, say, fd and fzf.”
Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway.” “let agents explore with `fd`/`rg`”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 on Hacker News
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
19 of the 28 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it seems to ignore so much that it's basically useless”
“find is absolute agony once you get a taste of fd.”
“a modern replacement that’s a bit friendlier to use”
“they are significantly more pleasant to work with.”
“Those programs have their imperfections as well”
“ripgrep and fd are much more interesting”
“a much faster find with an interface that actually fits how people tend to use the tool”
“It's amazing the scripts your LLM can make you with, say, fd and fzf.”
“they work natively on Windows”
“now moved everything to just rg+fd+cd+ls, much faster, easier, etc.”
“It is a big reason to why I prefer rg and fd over grep and find.”
“rg/fd respect gitignore automatically which solves this problem”
“I just tried &/hidden on rg and fd and it takes me straight to”
“So fast and easy there's no reason not to run it.”
“fd utility can't actually see files containing malformed utf-8”
“fd, rg and ag all work how I expect them to work”
“Being able to use them intuitively trumps ubiquity, speed or features.”
“let agents explore with `fd`/`rg`”
“I personally use `fd` and ripgrep more often than `find` these days.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.