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zoxide: a smarter cd replacement

Jan 29, 2026

toolsterminalproductivity
zoxide demo

what it is

zoxide is basically a smarter cd for your shell. it remembers which directories you visit most often and lets you jump to them with minimal keystrokes. it works across major shells like bash, zsh, fish, powershell, and more.

with a typical setup, instead of typing a long path:


cd ~/projects/infra/some/really/deep/dir

you’d do:


z infra

and it lands you there.

how it works

zoxide builds a “frecency” score — a mix of frequency and recency — for directories you’ve visited. the more you use a folder, the higher it ranks. later, you can jump by giving just part of the path/name and zoxide guesses the best match.

why it’s cool

  • less typing — no memorizing long paths
  • predictive navigation — learns your habits
  • cross-platform — works on linux, macos, windows, and more
  • fast and lightweight — written in rust with low overhead

once you’ve been using it for a bit, it feels like the shell just gets you instead of making you repeat paths. try it here