{"slug": "zoxide", "name": "zoxide", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "A smarter cd command that remembers frequently used directories and jumps to them.", "recommenders": 6, "commenters": 9, "warners": 0, "score": 6.178, "rising": 0.69, "first": "2026-01-02", "latest": "2026-09-16", "why": "Liked for quick, fuzzy jumping between frequently used directories, and some commenters call it one of their most-used tools.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Quick navigation", "Daily habit"], "caveat": "Index gaps", "short_quote": "intelligent cd to move between directories incredibly quickly", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide", "official_url": "https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["zoxide", "Zoxide"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked for quick, fuzzy jumping between frequently used directories", "cites": [{"id": 761703754, "item_id": 47606484, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47606484", "by": "Zizizizz", "date": "2026-04-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "intelligent cd to move between directories incredibly quickly", "excerpt": "https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin for fuzzy shell history (ctrl+r) https://github.com/sharkdp/bat (nice coloured cat replacement) https://github.com/abiosoft/colima (so I don't need docker desktop) https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb (performant database that lets you directly query JSON, parquet, csv files with SQL queries and convert one to the other. https://github.com/eradman/entr (rerun commands automatically when p", "context": "", "use_case": "fast directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What dev tools do you rely on that nobody talks about?"}, {"id": 745013906, "item_id": 46563369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563369", "by": "Zizizizz", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Zoxide to replace the alt+d cd shortcut as it's much faster", "excerpt": "I use atuin for the shell history as it seems to know when I've run a command in one tab/split while another is open where fzf doesn't seem to sync it all the time. But I still use fzf to find files. (Bonus, I use Zoxide to replace the alt+d cd shortcut as it's much faster, and use https://github.com/Aloxaf/fzf-tab for tab completions in the terminal to become fuzzy, very very useful)", "context": "", "use_case": "directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "You probably don't need Oh My Zsh"}, {"id": 789271457, "item_id": 49329466, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329466", "by": "amterp", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Big fan of gron[0] and zoxide[1]", "excerpt": "Big fan of gron[0] and zoxide[1]. Gron for flattening and viewing JSON, and zoxide (z) for fuzzily jumping around on my system or on remote systems with z installed. Also been using Rad [2] (disclaimer: am author) to replace my suite of Bash scripts and write new ones, quite happy with one atm which sets reminders e.g. 'remind 2h check the CI build' which will give me an OS reminder in two hours, I use it a ton at wo", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping around directories", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 760478896, "item_id": 47529931, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529931", "by": "ruptwelve", "date": "2026-03-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been a very big fan of zoxide.", "excerpt": "Maybe not a shell trick per-se but I have been a very big fan of zoxide. It can jump around your common directories. If you have a ~/workspace/projects and you are anywhere and type `cd projects` it will take you to that directory. I never realized how much I got hooked onto it, until I used a system without it.", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping between directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)"}]}, {"text": ", and some commenters call it one of their most-used tools.", "cites": [{"id": 795691920, "item_id": 49730745, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49730745", "by": "qxxx", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "zoxide is also probably my most used tool", "excerpt": "yes! zoxide is also probably my most used tool. I did not map it to cd yet, but I use the z command to jump into directories indexed by zoxide.", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping into directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "Small programming tricks"}, {"id": 760478896, "item_id": 47529931, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529931", "by": "ruptwelve", "date": "2026-03-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been a very big fan of zoxide.", "excerpt": "Maybe not a shell trick per-se but I have been a very big fan of zoxide. It can jump around your common directories. If you have a ~/workspace/projects and you are anywhere and type `cd projects` it will take you to that directory. I never realized how much I got hooked onto it, until I used a system without it.", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping between directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)"}]}, {"text": " The one caveat raised is that parent directories of a deep path are not indexed unless you cd into each one.", "cites": [{"id": 795711008, "item_id": 49731938, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49731938", "by": "GNOMES", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Also nice for when I use Zoxide to CD into a deep nested directory.", "excerpt": "Simple trick I use almost daily for navigating backwards to an exact directory: https://gist.github.com/GNOMES/6bf65926648e260d8023aebb9ede9573 I use this often instead of chaining together multiple '../..'. Also nice for when I use Zoxide to CD into a deep nested directory. I quickly found out unless you manually CD each hop, the different parent directories aren't added to your Zoxide DB. (I have come across snippi", "context": "", "use_case": "directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Small programming tricks"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Quick navigation", "summary": "Commenters say it moves between directories quickly and is faster than an alternative cd shortcut.", "quotes": [{"id": 761703754, "item_id": 47606484, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47606484", "by": "Zizizizz", "date": "2026-04-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "intelligent cd to move between directories incredibly quickly", "excerpt": "https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin for fuzzy shell history (ctrl+r) https://github.com/sharkdp/bat (nice coloured cat replacement) https://github.com/abiosoft/colima (so I don't need docker desktop) https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb (performant database that lets you directly query JSON, parquet, csv files with SQL queries and convert one to the other. https://github.com/eradman/entr (rerun commands automatically when p", "context": "", "use_case": "fast directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What dev tools do you rely on that nobody talks about?"}, {"id": 745013906, "item_id": 46563369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563369", "by": "Zizizizz", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Zoxide to replace the alt+d cd shortcut as it's much faster", "excerpt": "I use atuin for the shell history as it seems to know when I've run a command in one tab/split while another is open where fzf doesn't seem to sync it all the time. But I still use fzf to find files. (Bonus, I use Zoxide to replace the alt+d cd shortcut as it's much faster, and use https://github.com/Aloxaf/fzf-tab for tab completions in the terminal to become fuzzy, very very useful)", "context": "", "use_case": "directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "You probably don't need Oh My Zsh"}, {"id": 760478896, "item_id": 47529931, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529931", "by": "ruptwelve", "date": "2026-03-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been a very big fan of zoxide.", "excerpt": "Maybe not a shell trick per-se but I have been a very big fan of zoxide. It can jump around your common directories. If you have a ~/workspace/projects and you are anywhere and type `cd projects` it will take you to that directory. I never realized how much I got hooked onto it, until I used a system without it.", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping between directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)"}]}, {"label": "Daily habit", "summary": "Users call it one of their most used tools and say they miss it on systems without it.", "quotes": [{"id": 795691920, "item_id": 49730745, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49730745", "by": "qxxx", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "zoxide is also probably my most used tool", "excerpt": "yes! zoxide is also probably my most used tool. I did not map it to cd yet, but I use the z command to jump into directories indexed by zoxide.", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping into directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "Small programming tricks"}, {"id": 760478896, "item_id": 47529931, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529931", "by": "ruptwelve", "date": "2026-03-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been a very big fan of zoxide.", "excerpt": "Maybe not a shell trick per-se but I have been a very big fan of zoxide. It can jump around your common directories. If you have a ~/workspace/projects and you are anywhere and type `cd projects` it will take you to that directory. I never realized how much I got hooked onto it, until I used a system without it.", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping between directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)"}]}, {"label": "Fits terminal setups", "summary": "It is listed alongside tools like tmux, neovim, fish and starship in preferred terminal setups.", "quotes": [{"id": 762176273, "item_id": 47636017, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47636017", "by": "Curiositry", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Fish, zoxide, tmux, helix, ripgrep, fd-find, htop. There are many more, but these are the ones that I enjoy using.", "excerpt": "Fish, zoxide, tmux, helix, ripgrep, fd-find, htop. There are many more, but these are the ones that I enjoy using. (Other than tmux.)", "context": "", "use_case": "directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?"}, {"id": 743470118, "item_id": 46466882, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466882", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use WezTerm, tmux, neovim, Zoxide", "excerpt": "> The context is king Agree > and AI Studio is the only serious product for human-in-the-loop SWE Disagree. I use Claude Code and Codex daily, and I couldn\u2019t be happier. Had started with Cursor, switched to CLI based agents and never looked back. I use WezTerm, tmux, neovim, Zoxide, and create several tabs and panes and run claude code not only for vibe coding, scripting, analysing files, letting it write concepts, t", "context": "", "use_case": "directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vibe Coding Killed Cursor"}, {"id": 745014977, "item_id": 46563436, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563436", "by": "darkamaul", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "zoxide for the a command", "excerpt": "I have been using OMZ for the last 8 years but recently made the switch to plain zsh with : - starship for a better prompt - Claude ported plugins I was using from omz (extract, sudo) - custom written aliases that were muscle memory - zoxide for the a command So far that has been a great move, my terminal tab feel snappy again. One thing I miss (but I\u2019m sure I could find a way to replace it) is `cd \u2026.\u00b4", "context": "", "use_case": "directory jumping", "switched_from": "", "story": "You probably don't need Oh My Zsh"}]}, {"label": "Fuzzy matching", "summary": "One user jumps around their system fuzzily, including on remote systems with it installed.", "quotes": [{"id": 789271457, "item_id": 49329466, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329466", "by": "amterp", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Big fan of gron[0] and zoxide[1]", "excerpt": "Big fan of gron[0] and zoxide[1]. Gron for flattening and viewing JSON, and zoxide (z) for fuzzily jumping around on my system or on remote systems with z installed. Also been using Rad [2] (disclaimer: am author) to replace my suite of Bash scripts and write new ones, quite happy with one atm which sets reminders e.g. 'remind 2h check the CI build' which will give me an OS reminder in two hours, I use it a ton at wo", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping around directories", "switched_from": "", "story": null}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Index gaps", "summary": "Jumping straight into a deep path does not add its parent directories to the database.", "quotes": [{"id": 795711008, "item_id": 49731938, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49731938", "by": "GNOMES", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Also nice for when I use Zoxide to CD into a deep nested directory.", "excerpt": "Simple trick I use almost daily for navigating backwards to an exact directory: https://gist.github.com/GNOMES/6bf65926648e260d8023aebb9ede9573 I use this often instead of chaining together multiple '../..'. Also nice for when I use Zoxide to CD into a deep nested directory. I quickly found out unless you manually CD each hop, the different parent directories aren't added to your Zoxide DB. (I have come across snippi", "context": "", "use_case": "directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Small programming tricks"}]}], "who": [], "tags": ["pairs with fzf", "for keyboard-driven workflows", "for zsh users", "for fish users"], "use_cases": ["directory navigation", "jumping into directories", "jumping around directories", "keyboard-centric navigation", "fast directory navigation", "jumping between directories"], "compared": [{"slug": "tmux", "name": "tmux", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "fzf", "name": "fzf", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "atuin", "name": "Atuin", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49729000", "title": "Small programming tricks", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562790", "title": "You probably don't need Oh My Zsh", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49314700", "title": "item 49314700", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47734912", "title": "Midnight Captain \u2013 A midnight commander inspired file manager", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626747", "title": "Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47602040", "title": "Ask HN: What dev tools do you rely on that nobody talks about?", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 795711008, "item_id": 49731938, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49731938", "by": "GNOMES", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Also nice for when I use Zoxide to CD into a deep nested directory.", "excerpt": "Simple trick I use almost daily for navigating backwards to an exact directory: https://gist.github.com/GNOMES/6bf65926648e260d8023aebb9ede9573 I use this often instead of chaining together multiple '../..'. Also nice for when I use Zoxide to CD into a deep nested directory. I quickly found out unless you manually CD each hop, the different parent directories aren't added to your Zoxide DB. (I have come across snippi", "context": "", "use_case": "directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Small programming tricks"}, {"id": 795691920, "item_id": 49730745, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49730745", "by": "qxxx", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "zoxide is also probably my most used tool", "excerpt": "yes! zoxide is also probably my most used tool. I did not map it to cd yet, but I use the z command to jump into directories indexed by zoxide.", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping into directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "Small programming tricks"}, {"id": 789271457, "item_id": 49329466, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329466", "by": "amterp", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Big fan of gron[0] and zoxide[1]", "excerpt": "Big fan of gron[0] and zoxide[1]. Gron for flattening and viewing JSON, and zoxide (z) for fuzzily jumping around on my system or on remote systems with z installed. Also been using Rad [2] (disclaimer: am author) to replace my suite of Bash scripts and write new ones, quite happy with one atm which sets reminders e.g. 'remind 2h check the CI build' which will give me an OS reminder in two hours, I use it a ton at wo", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping around directories", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 763832657, "item_id": 47739541, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47739541", "by": "gala8y", "date": "2026-04-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "using vifm with some zoxide/fzf extra commands", "excerpt": "> With OpenCode, I can finally make my own terminal file manager. I borrowed the main design concepts from Midnight Commander and some behavior from NVim-Tree file explorer. I recently switched to almost exclusively using vifm with some zoxide/fzf extra commands for even more keyboard-centric usage and it really feels like it is now 'my own terminal file manager'.", "context": "", "use_case": "keyboard-centric navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Midnight Captain \u2013 A midnight commander inspired file manager"}, {"id": 762176273, "item_id": 47636017, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47636017", "by": "Curiositry", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Fish, zoxide, tmux, helix, ripgrep, fd-find, htop. There are many more, but these are the ones that I enjoy using.", "excerpt": "Fish, zoxide, tmux, helix, ripgrep, fd-find, htop. There are many more, but these are the ones that I enjoy using. (Other than tmux.)", "context": "", "use_case": "directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?"}, {"id": 761703754, "item_id": 47606484, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47606484", "by": "Zizizizz", "date": "2026-04-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "intelligent cd to move between directories incredibly quickly", "excerpt": "https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin for fuzzy shell history (ctrl+r) https://github.com/sharkdp/bat (nice coloured cat replacement) https://github.com/abiosoft/colima (so I don't need docker desktop) https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb (performant database that lets you directly query JSON, parquet, csv files with SQL queries and convert one to the other. https://github.com/eradman/entr (rerun commands automatically when p", "context": "", "use_case": "fast directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What dev tools do you rely on that nobody talks about?"}, {"id": 760478896, "item_id": 47529931, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529931", "by": "ruptwelve", "date": "2026-03-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been a very big fan of zoxide.", "excerpt": "Maybe not a shell trick per-se but I have been a very big fan of zoxide. It can jump around your common directories. If you have a ~/workspace/projects and you are anywhere and type `cd projects` it will take you to that directory. I never realized how much I got hooked onto it, until I used a system without it.", "context": "", "use_case": "jumping between directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)"}, {"id": 745014977, "item_id": 46563436, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563436", "by": "darkamaul", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "zoxide for the a command", "excerpt": "I have been using OMZ for the last 8 years but recently made the switch to plain zsh with : - starship for a better prompt - Claude ported plugins I was using from omz (extract, sudo) - custom written aliases that were muscle memory - zoxide for the a command So far that has been a great move, my terminal tab feel snappy again. One thing I miss (but I\u2019m sure I could find a way to replace it) is `cd \u2026.\u00b4", "context": "", "use_case": "directory jumping", "switched_from": "", "story": "You probably don't need Oh My Zsh"}, {"id": 745013906, "item_id": 46563369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563369", "by": "Zizizizz", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Zoxide to replace the alt+d cd shortcut as it's much faster", "excerpt": "I use atuin for the shell history as it seems to know when I've run a command in one tab/split while another is open where fzf doesn't seem to sync it all the time. But I still use fzf to find files. (Bonus, I use Zoxide to replace the alt+d cd shortcut as it's much faster, and use https://github.com/Aloxaf/fzf-tab for tab completions in the terminal to become fuzzy, very very useful)", "context": "", "use_case": "directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "You probably don't need Oh My Zsh"}, {"id": 743470118, "item_id": 46466882, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466882", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use WezTerm, tmux, neovim, Zoxide", "excerpt": "> The context is king Agree > and AI Studio is the only serious product for human-in-the-loop SWE Disagree. I use Claude Code and Codex daily, and I couldn\u2019t be happier. Had started with Cursor, switched to CLI based agents and never looked back. I use WezTerm, tmux, neovim, Zoxide, and create several tabs and panes and run claude code not only for vibe coding, scripting, analysing files, letting it write concepts, t", "context": "", "use_case": "directory navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vibe Coding Killed Cursor"}]}