Whaaat ? You’re Still Not Using z ?!

z cd history

Unlock Warp-Speed Navigation with Your Shell History

If you’re still wasting time typing out full paths or awkwardly tab-completing your way around your filesystem like it’s 1999, it’s time for a wake-up call.

Let me introduce you to **z** — the tiny shell tool that makes cd feel like time travel.

🚀 What Is z ?

z is a shell script that tracks the directories you cd into and lets you jump to them with fuzzy matching based on frequency and recency. Think of it as your shell’s memory on steroids.

Instead of this:

cd ~/projects/2025/clients/chisely.io/frontend

Just do:

z chisely

or even:

z fron

Boom. You’re there. z knows what you meant.

🛠️ Installation (It’s Just One File)

For bash/zsh:

git clone https://github.com/rupa/z.git ~/.z
echo “. ~/.z/z.sh” >> ~/.bashrc # or ~/.zshrc
source ~/.bashrc # or ~/.zshrc

Basic Usage

• z foo Jump to directory matching “foo”
• z bar baz Match directories with both “bar” and “baz”
• z -l List your most used directories
• z -r foo Search based on recency
• z -t foo Search based on frequency

🧠 How Does It Work?

It justs logs every cd you do into a .z file. It ranks entries by frecent score: a mix of frequency and recency.

When you z <keyword>, it finds the best match.

So the more you use it, the smarter it gets.

🎯 Pro Tip — combine with fzf for interactive version

Use z -l | fzf to combine with fuzzy finders.

zi() { cd "$(z -l | sort -rn | awk '{$1=""; print substr($0,2)}' | fzf)" }