zoxide

A cd command that learns your habits

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Examples
• Getting started
  • Installing zoxide
  • Adding zoxide to your shell
    • zsh
    • bash
    • fish
• Configuration
  • Environment variables

Introduction

zoxide is a new cd alternative inspired by z and z.lua. It keeps track of the directories you use most frequently, and uses a ranking algorithm to navigate to the best match.

On my system, compiled with the x86_64-unknown-linux-musl target, hyperfine reports that zoxide runs 10-20x faster than z.lua, which, in turn, runs 3x faster than z. This is pretty significant, since this command runs once at every shell prompt, and any slowdown there will result in an increased loading time for every prompt.

Examples

z foo       # cd to highest ranked directory matching foo
z foo bar   # cd to highest ranked directory matching foo and bar

z foo/      # can also cd into actual directories

zi foo      # cd with interactive selection using fzf

zq foo      # echo the best match, don't cd

za /foo     # add /foo to the database
zr /foo     # remove /foo from the database

Getting started

Step 1: Installing zoxide

If you have Rust, this should be as simple as:

cargo install zoxide -f

Otherwise, try the install script:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide/master/install.sh | sh

If you want the interactive fuzzy selection feature, you will also need to install fzf.

Step 2: Adding zoxide to your shell

By default, zoxide defines the z, zi, za, zq, and zr aliases. If you'd like to go with just the barebones z, pass the --no-define-aliases flag to zoxide init.

zsh

Add the following line to your ~/.zshrc:

eval "$(zoxide init zsh)"

bash

Add the following line to your ~/.bashrc:

eval "$(zoxide init bash)"

fish

Add the following line to your ~/.config/fish/config.fish:

zoxide init fish | source

Configuration

Environment variables

• $_ZO_DATA: sets the location of the database (default: ~/.zo)
• $_ZO_MAXAGE: sets the maximum total rank after which entries start getting deleted