zoxide: tips and tricks

zoxide is a smart and fast alternative to cd that learns your directory usage patterns and allows you to jump to directories quickly. It’s one of my favorite command-line tools and it’s an essential part of my workflow.

Here are some tips and tricks to get the most out of zoxide:

• Normally you’d use z to trigger zoxide, but pressing z is not super convenient. That’s why I like to use j instead. You can set this up by adding the following to your shell configuration file (e.g., .bashrc, .zshrc):

  alias j='z'
  

• If you have fzf installed, the zi command can be used to interactively select a directory to jump to. You can also use jj with fzf by adding the following alias:

  alias jj='zi'
  

• zoxide was inspired by z and autojump, but unlike them it’s a complete replacement for cd. That’s why it’s not a bad idea to simply alias cd to z:

  alias cd='z'
  

• If you have multiple directories with similar names you can use SPACE to trigger smart completion for your options:

  z mydir<SPACE>
  

This will present the matching candidates (using fzf if present), and you can select one to jump to it.

• If you’re a Fish user (like me), you can get nice TAB completions by installing the following Fish plugin:

  fisher install icezyclon/zoxide.fish
  

Now try the following:

  z mydir<TAB>

You can read more about the plugin here.

Note that zoxide uses cd internally, so switching fully to it won’t mess with any of Fish’s internally directory stack. (e.g. dirh and cdh)

And that’s a wrap! Even though I do all of the above, I think the first two items are the most important. j and jj are very easy to type and cover all of my use-cases beautifully. If you have any other tips or tricks for zoxide, feel free to share them in the comments below!

That’s all I have for you today! Keep hacking!