Navigate configs faster

I previously used shell aliases to quickly access the config files I was modifying often. This become a bit cumbersome when the number of configs grew.

Instead, I now use a small pick utility combined with a config function to quickly select which config to edit or navigate to. These are very simple scripts, but nice QoL conveniences.

Usage

The config function opens fzf to let you pick a config directory, then launches your $EDITOR in that directory. You can also pass a query directly to skip the interactive picker.

config                  # Config selection in fzf, opening in $EDITOR
config niri             # Opens niri config in $EDITOR

I alias config to c for even quicker access:

alias c="config"
c niri                  # Same as above, but shorter
c ghostty               # Open ghostty config

How it works

The setup consists of two parts: a pick script and a config function.

pick is a small bash script that uses fzf to list directories from configurable roots. It supports two modes:

• pick config: Scans ~/.config/* plus ~/.dotfiles
• pick project: Scans ~/dev/*

It supports both interactive selection and direct query filtering.

The config function wraps pick config to cd into the selected directory and open $EDITOR:

config() {
  local dir
  dir="$(pick config "${1:-}")" || return
  cd "$dir" || return
  ${EDITOR:-nvim} .
}

The pick script

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

shopt -s nullglob

if ! command -v fzf >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  printf '%s\n' "fzf not found. Install fzf first." >&2
  exit 1
fi

mode="${1:-project}"
query="${2:-}"
roots=()
extra=()

case "$mode" in
  project)
    prompt="Projects> "
    roots=("$HOME/dev")
    extra=()
    ;;
  config)
    prompt="Config> "
    roots=("$HOME/.config")
    extra=("$HOME/.dotfiles")
    ;;
  *)
    printf '%s\n' "Usage: pick [project|config] [query]" >&2
    exit 2
    ;;
esac

dirs=()

for root in "${roots[@]-}" ; do
  [ -d "$root" ] || continue
  for dir in "$root"/*/; do
    [ -d "$dir" ] || continue
    dirs+=("${dir%/}")
  done
done

for dir in "${extra[@]-}"; do
  [ -d "$dir" ] && dirs+=("$dir")
done

if [ "${#dirs[@]}" -eq 0 ]; then
  printf '%s\n' "No directories found." >&2
  exit 1
fi

if [ -n "$query" ]; then
  result="$(printf '%s\n' "${dirs[@]}" | sort -u | fzf --filter="$query" | head -n 1 || true)"
  if [ -z "$result" ]; then
    printf '%s\n' "No match found for: $query" >&2
    exit 1
  fi
  printf '%s\n' "$result"
else
  printf '%s\n' "${dirs[@]}" | sort -u | fzf --prompt="$prompt" --height=50% --reverse
fi

Bonus: project picker

The same pick utility also powers a pp function for projects:

pp                      # Interactive project picker
pp my-project           # Open specific project

All of these live in my dotfiles repo.