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

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:

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:

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!