jcd 1.0.1

By Mark Russinovich

Published: October 13, 2025

Download jcd for Linux and macOS (GitHub)

Introduction

jcd (jump change directory) is a Rust-based command-line tool that provides enhanced directory navigation with substring matching and smart selection. It's like the cd command, but with superpowers!

Features

Tab Navigation: Intelligent cycling through all matches with visual feedback and animated loading indicators
Bidirectional Tab Cycling: Tab cycles forward, Shift+Tab cycles backward through matches
Case Sensitivity Control: Use -i flag for case-insensitive matching (default is case-sensitive)
Directory Ignore Support: Skip unwanted directories using .jcdignore files with regex patterns
Flexible Ignore Configuration: Support for project-local, user, and system-wide ignore files
First-Match Jump: Press Enter after typing to immediately navigate to the best match
Priority Matching Order:
1. Exact matches prioritized over partial matches
2. Up-tree matches (parent directories) have highest priority
3. Down-tree matches (subdirectories) sorted by proximity
4. Alphabetical sorting within same priority level
Substring Matching: Find directories by partial name matches
Bidirectional Search: Searches both up the directory tree and down into subdirectories

Usage

Usage:
  jcd [-i] [-x] <directory_pattern>   - Changes directory according to the pattern

Flags:
  -i                     - Case-insensitive matching (default: case-sensitive)
  -x                     - Bypass ignore patterns (search all directories)

directory_pattern:
  jcd <substring>        # Navigate to directory matching substring
  jcd <absolute_path>    # Navigate to absolute path
  jcd <path/pattern>     # Navigate using path-like patterns

Security

If you believe you have found a security issue, please report it via the project's GitHub repository rather than opening a public issue.