diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index d520e15b78..6e53f3df18 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -2605,6 +2605,7 @@ dependencies = [
  "postcard",
  "quic-rpc",
  "rand",
+ "rand_xorshift",
  "ratatui",
  "regex",
  "reqwest 0.12.5",
diff --git a/iroh-cli/Cargo.toml b/iroh-cli/Cargo.toml
index 1615b59bc2..f77daa5ddb 100644
--- a/iroh-cli/Cargo.toml
+++ b/iroh-cli/Cargo.toml
@@ -69,6 +69,7 @@ tracing-subscriber = { version = "0.3", features = ["env-filter"] }
 [dev-dependencies]
 duct = "0.13.6"
 nix = { version = "0.27", features = ["signal", "process"] }
+rand_xorshift = "0.3.0"
 regex = "1.10.3"
 testdir = "0.9.1"
 walkdir = "2"
diff --git a/iroh-cli/tests/cli.rs b/iroh-cli/tests/cli.rs
index ae6f2993a0..8bb6735df2 100644
--- a/iroh-cli/tests/cli.rs
+++ b/iroh-cli/tests/cli.rs
@@ -15,17 +15,27 @@ use iroh::{
     blobs::{Hash, HashAndFormat},
     util::path::IrohPaths,
 };
-use rand::distributions::{Alphanumeric, DistString};
-use rand::SeedableRng;
+use rand::{RngCore, SeedableRng};
 use regex::Regex;
 use testdir::testdir;
 use walkdir::WalkDir;
 
 fn make_rand_file(size: usize, path: &Path) -> Result<Hash> {
-    let mut rng = rand::rngs::StdRng::seed_from_u64(1);
-    let content = Alphanumeric.sample_string(&mut rng, size);
+    // 64 chars makes for easy random sampling
+    const CHARS_LUT: &[u8; 64] = b"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ\
+        abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz\
+        0123456789 .";
+
+    // We do something custom to eek out a little bit more performance
+    // over just a simple `rand::distributions::Alphanumeric.sample_string`.
+    let mut rng = rand_xorshift::XorShiftRng::seed_from_u64(1);
+    let content = std::iter::from_fn(move || Some(rng.next_u32()))
+        .flat_map(u32::to_le_bytes)
+        .map(|num| CHARS_LUT[(num >> (8 - 6)) as usize])
+        .take(size)
+        .collect::<Vec<_>>();
 
-    let hash = blake3::hash(content.as_bytes());
+    let hash = blake3::hash(&content);
     std::fs::write(path, content)?;
     Ok(hash.into())
 }
@@ -904,7 +914,7 @@ fn match_get_stderr(stderr: Vec<u8>) -> Result<Vec<(usize, Vec<String>)>> {
             (r"", 1),
             (r"Fetching: [\da-z]{52}", 1),
             (
-                r"Transferred (\d*.?\d*? ?[BKMGT]i?B?) in \d* seconds?, \d*.?\d* ?(?:B|KiB|MiB|GiB|TiB)/s",
+                r"Transferred (\d*.?\d*? ?[BKMGT]i?B?) in \d* (second|minute)s?, \d*.?\d* ?(?:B|KiB|MiB|GiB|TiB)/s",
                 1,
             ),
         ],