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'
  

It took me a while to figure that z wasn’t the optimal keybinding for zoxide and I’m really happy with j.

• If you have fzf installed, the zi command can be used to interactively select a directory to jump to. zi is another thing that’s not super easy to type, so I suggest using the jj alias instead:

  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'
  

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

• 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.

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!