How to install autojump for Fish on Ubuntu

Autojump is a tool that can be used to jump around in the shell to frequently used directories by typing just a part of their name. It is typically aliased to j. Autojump is available as a package in the Ubuntu repositories, but it needs manual intervention to be available in the fish shell.

1. Install autojump

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sudo apt install autojump

2. Source the autojump.fish file in your fish configuration, by opening the file ~/.config/fish/config.fish in an editor and adding these lines:

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begin
    set --local AUTOJUMP_PATH /usr/share/autojump/autojump.fish
    if test -e $AUTOJUMP_PATH
        source $AUTOJUMP_PATH
    end
end

3. Add j shortcut command to fish creating a new file ~/.config/fish/functions/j.fishwith the following content:

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function j
    set new_path (autojump $argv)
 
    if test -d "$new_path"
        echo $new_path
        cd "$new_path"
    else
        echo "autojump: directory '$argv' not found"
        echo "Try \`autojump --help\` for more information."
        false
    end
end

Usage examples:

– j Down – changes to my Downloads folder
– j work – changes to my workspace folder

Enjoy!

test