Why lazyaz - Azure Portal & Storage Explorer Alternative for the Terminal

If you’re reading this, you probably already have a way to interact with Azure. So why add another tool? Here’s how lazyaz compares to what you’re likely using today.

vs. Azure Portal

The Azure Portal is the default way to browse Azure resources, but it’s designed for everything — provisioning, monitoring, billing, RBAC, networking — not for the narrow task of “let me quickly check what’s in this container” or “what messages are stuck in the dead-letter queue.”

Where lazyaz wins:

• Speed — no browser, no page loads, no waiting for the portal to render. lazyaz shows results in milliseconds.
• Keyboard-first — every action is a keystroke. No mouse required.
• Works over SSH — debugging a production issue from a jump host? lazyaz runs in any terminal.
• Multi-service tabs — Blob, Service Bus, and Key Vault side by side. The portal makes you navigate between separate blades.
• DLQ operations — requeue, move, or complete dead-letter messages in bulk with native peek-lock transactions. The portal’s Service Bus explorer is limited.

Where the portal wins:

• Resource provisioning and management (creating storage accounts, setting up RBAC, etc.)
• Monitoring dashboards and metrics
• Anything outside Blob/ServiceBus/KeyVault

lazyaz is not a portal replacement — it’s a shortcut for the inspect-and-debug tasks you do every day.

vs. Azure Storage Explorer

Storage Explorer is Microsoft’s desktop app for browsing Blob, Table, Queue, and File storage. It’s Electron-based and focused primarily on storage.

Where lazyaz wins:

• Lighter — no Electron, no GUI framework. lazyaz is a single Go binary under 20 MB.
• Faster startup — launches instantly. Storage Explorer can take several seconds.
• Service Bus + Key Vault — Storage Explorer only covers storage. lazyaz covers three services in one tool.
• Terminal-native — works over SSH, inside tmux, on headless servers. Storage Explorer needs a display.
• DLQ management — Storage Explorer has no Service Bus support at all.

Where Storage Explorer wins:

• Table and Queue storage (lazyaz focuses on Blob)
• Drag-and-drop uploads
• AzCopy integration for large transfers
• GUI for users who prefer mouse-driven workflows

vs. az CLI

The Azure CLI is powerful and scriptable, but it’s designed for one-shot commands — not interactive browsing.

Where lazyaz wins:

• Interactive exploration — browse and drill into resources without knowing exact names. No need to construct az storage blob list --account-name X --container-name Y --prefix Z from memory.
• Context — see parent and child resources simultaneously in a miller-columns layout.
• DLQ workflows — peeking a dead-letter queue with az servicebus requires multiple commands and JSON parsing. lazyaz shows it in a list.
• Preview — view blob contents with syntax highlighting, inline. No piping to jq or writing to temp files.

Where az CLI wins:

• Scripting and automation (CI/CD pipelines, shell scripts)
• Full API coverage — az wraps every Azure API. lazyaz covers browse/inspect operations.
• Write operations (uploads, deletes, config changes) — lazyaz is read-focused with targeted write operations (DLQ requeue, download).

The sweet spot

lazyaz is purpose-built for one thing: fast, keyboard-driven browsing and inspection of Azure resources during development and debugging. It doesn’t try to replace the portal, Storage Explorer, or the CLI — it complements them by making the most common inspect tasks faster.

If you find yourself doing any of these regularly, lazyaz will save you time:

• Checking what’s in a blob container
• Peeking dead-letter queues to debug message failures
• Pulling a secret value during local development
• Browsing resources across multiple subscriptions or tenants
• Inspecting message properties or blob metadata