menucd

Directory browser and changer for the command line.

menucd shows a curses menu of the current directory's subdirectories plus your saved bookmarks. Move with the arrow keys, filter as you type, save the current directory as a bookmark — then pick one and your shell lands in it. It does only that: browse, bookmark, and cd. For copy/move/delete, use a file manager.

Requirements

• ncurses, including the menu library (libmenuw / libmenu)

To build: a C compiler and meson.

Runs on Linux, the BSDs, and macOS. It won't run from the native Windows console (no ncurses there) without WSL, MSYS2, or a similar environment.

Build and install

meson setup _build
meson compile -C _build
meson install -C _build   # optional — installs the menucd binary

Usage

menucd runs as a small wrapper shell function so it can change your current shell's directory. A child process can't do that on its own, so the binary hands the chosen directory back through a file that the function reads.

After installing the menucd binary (e.g. meson install), add this function to your ~/.profile, ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, etc:

menucd() {
  cdfile="${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR:-/tmp}/menucd.cd.exit"
  rm -f "$cdfile"
  command menucd "$@"
  ret=$?
  if [ -r "$cdfile" ]; then
    cd "$(cat "$cdfile")" || return
    rm -f "$cdfile"
  fi
  return $ret
}

Reload your shell config:

source ~/.profile

Then run menucd. Running the binary directly works, but it can't change your shell's directory without this wrapper.

You can pass a starting directory as the first argument — menucd ~/projects opens the menu there instead of the current directory.

Key bindings

Key	Action
Up / Down, PgUp / PgDn	move the selection
Backspace	go up to the parent directory (same as selecting ..)
Enter	cd into the highlighted directory or bookmark
s	save the current directory as a bookmark
d	delete the bookmark under the cursor (asks first)
/	search — filter the list as you type (Enter accepts, ESC clears)
q	quit, returning your shell to the selected directory
x / ESC	cancel — quit without changing directory
?	show this key-binding help inside the program

Bookmarks are stored in $XDG_DATA_HOME/menucd/bookmarks (default ~/.local/share/menucd/bookmarks).