The Problem: “cd” & “ls” sucks 👎

keep using cd command to change the directory and ls to preview files in the current directory, may work sometimes but it’s frustrating to have to use this workflow all the time whenever you want to go somewhere

The Solution

I will give you 3 solutions not just one to make your life easier in the terminal and jump easily between files

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” — Abraham Lincoln

Let’s sharpen our Axe 🪓

you gonna need some perquisites to follow with me

• Zsh

• Tmux

• Zoxide

• LF

• Fzf

Solution 1: Zoxide

zoxide is a marter cd command

this one is pretty cool, here is what it’s doing:

• it remembers all directories you visit, and organizes them by most frequent

• all you need is to type some letters from the name des => Desktop

• it jumps immediately there (super super cool)

step 1: Install it with Homebrew

brew install zoxide

step 2: Initialize in ~/.zshrc

• open your ~/.zshrc file and add this to initialize it

eval "$(zoxide init zsh)"

• source ~/.zshrc to apply the changes

source ~/.zshrc

step 3: Use zoxide instead of “cd”

• first, you need to visit the directories you want to jump to

• so, zoxide can identify it, and Fuzzy find it

• type z + any letters you remember from the directory

z desk  
// cd ~/Desktop

Solution 2: LF Manager

lf(as in "list files") is a terminal file manager written in Go with a heavy inspiration from ranger file manager

Let me tell you a secret, this is my favorite one 🤫

• if you’re like me, using Vim navigation keys hjkl

• After you get used to it, you suddenly want to use them everywhere

• LF does exactly that, it works like columns view in Finder but with Vim

• But don’t get me wrong, it still works with regular “Arrow” keys as well

Step 1: Install it with Homebrew

brew install lf

Step 2: Change directory on quit

“ It's funny, but for some reason, it didn’t change the directory on quit”

• It’s like the main point, right !! 🥲

• so let's fix this with a small function that works as a wrapper to lf

• it just saves the last directory path in the temp file, then cd to it

Add this function to your ~/.zshrc

# lf wrapper 
function lf {
  local tmp=$(mktemp)
  command lf -last-dir-path="$tmp" "$@"
  cd "$(cat "$tmp")"
  rm -r "$tmp"
}

Step 3: Customize your “lfrc” file

It’s the LF config file to customize it, I like to keep it minimal

• few UI interface configurations

• shortcuts to jump to my frequent main directories

• with a small cheatsheet for favorite LF shortcuts

you gonna find at ~/.config/lf/lfrc ( if you can’t find it, create it )

#  _  __                    __ _       
# | |/ _|   ___ ___  _ __  / _(_) __ _ 
# | | |_   / __/ _ \| '_ \| |_| |/ _` |
# | |  _| | (_| (_) | | | |  _| | (_| |
# |_|_|    \___\___/|_| |_|_| |_|\__, |
#                                |___/ 

# ui
set hidden                # show hidden files
set icons                 # show icons for files/directories 
set relativenumber        # show files/directories relative numbers 

# jump shortcuts
map gh cd ~               # use 'gh' to go home directory
map gp cd ~/personal/     # use 'gp' to go personal directory
map gw cd ~/work/         # use 'gw' to go work directory
map gt cd ~/tools/        # use 'gt' to go tools directory
map gd cd ~/Downloads/    # use 'gd' to go downloads directory
map gv cd /Volumes/       # use 'gv' to go volumes for (external drives)
map gb cd ~/brainExt      # use 'gb' to go obsidian BrainExt vault 

# fav shortcuts
# ==============
# hjkl/gg/G               # Vim-like Navigation (move)
# space/v/u               # select/invert/unselect (select)
# y/d/p/c                 # yank/delete/paste/clear (change)
# i/e/l                   # open with less/default-editor/default-app (open)

change your default editor in ~/.zshrc

• to make sure, that when you use e shortcut, it always opens with it

• then verify that your default editor changed: echo $EDITOR

export EDITOR=vi                 # change default editor to vim

Step 4: Cool Tmux Keybinding

Imagine this scenario, you’re working on a file in Tmux, then do a quick shortcut to open lf in a new window, to open any file from the same directory 🚀

• Let's go do exactly that, in ~/.tmux.conf

• But first, make sure that zsh is our default shell for tmux conf

# set default shell to zsh 
set-option -g default-shell /bin/zsh

• this smart keybinding ctrl+f, open a new window with the name “Files”

• The new window starts from the same path as well as your current window

• And finally it open lf directly there ( use q to quit )

# ctrl+f => lf (q)
bind -n C-f new-window -n "files" -c "#{pane_current_path}" "zsh -ic 'lf; zsh'"

• Don’t forget to source ~/.tmux.conf

tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

Solution 3: Tmux-fzf Script

This one we don’t just use another utility, we build our own tmux manager script to fuzzy find all our project files in specific directories and jump 🦘

Step 1: Organize your project files in specific directories

For example

• ~/personal

• ~/work

• ~/tools

Step 2: Build “Tmux Manager” Bash Script

• Create a new file with the name tmux_manager.sh in tools directory

• change this file into an executable: chmod +x tmux_manager.sh

• This script lists all projects, in those directories to fuzzy find

• Finally, open the selected project as Tmux Session (or create it if not found)

#!/usr/bin/env bash 

#  _                                                                      
# | |_ _ __ ___  _   ___  __  _ __ ___   __ _ _ __   __ _  __ _  ___ _ __ 
# | __| '_ ` _ \| | | \ \/ / | '_ ` _ \ / _` | '_ \ / _` |/ _` |/ _ \ '__|
# | |_| | | | | | |_| |>  <  | | | | | | (_| | | | | (_| | (_| |  __/ |   
#  \__|_| |_| |_|\__,_/_/\_\ |_| |_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|\__,_|\__, |\___|_|   
#                                                         |___/           

# use fuzzy finder to get my working directories paths 
session=$(find ~ ~/personal ~/work/ ~/tools -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d | fzf)

# get last part as name & replace any (.) with (_)
session_name=$(basename "$session" | tr . _)

# if session isn't already existed, create it 
if ! tmux has-session -t "$session_name" 2> /dev/null; then # remove err msg to null 
  tmux new-session -s "$session_name" -c "$session" -d
fi 

# switch to session by name 
tmux switch-client -t "$session_name"

Step 3: Create Alias to our “Tmux Manager” script

• open ~/.zshrc, to add our new Alias

• Don’t forget to source it 😉 source ~/.zshrc

alias tm="~/tools/tmux_manager.sh"

Step 4: Cooool tmux keybinding for “Tmux Manager”

• The same trick we did before with lf

• quick shortcut ctrl+t will run our tmux manager script alias

• it will open in a new tmux window, big list of all projects

• your selected project will open in its own Tmux session

• tell me that this isn’t cool ?! 🙃

bind -n C-t new-window -n "tmux" "zsh -ic 'tm; zsh'"

• don’t forget to source ~/.tmux.conf

tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

Let’s be friends on Twitter 👋

https://twitter.com/belalsamyyy