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Last time I saw a screenshot of Emacs-nav:

enter image description here /// My attention was directly shifted to the left corner in the bottom, called "Quickjumps". I assume this is sort of bookmark list.

When I open Dired, I often find myself switching between various directories, before I land on the directory that I want. So the idea of integrating frequently directories in your file explorer find I very neat.

When googling around, it seems there is no any option to integrate a sort of bookmark/quickjump in the Dired buffer? I'm open for any suggestion in this case.

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    I use Bookmarks+, it has satisfying support for bookmarking dired locations.
    – InHarmsWay
    Nov 19, 2015 at 23:19

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  1. You can bookmark a Dired buffer. Bookmarks are typically persistent, which means that you can return to them in another Emacs session.

    If you use Bookmark+ then a Dired bookmark records also which subdirs are inserted, as well as the current omissions and markings.

    You could easily arrange to bookmark any Dired buffers you are visiting when you quit Emacs. Or bookmark all Dired buffers that you visit. You could also arrange to cull these according to bookmark-created date, so you would, in effect, keep only the most recent.

  2. If you insist on having the recent entries not in a bookmark-list buffer but in a Dired buffer, then remember that a Dired buffer need not show only a given directory and its subdirectories. It can show any set of files and directories, from anywhere.

    That is, you can create a Dired listing that includes arbitrary files (and directories). You would only need to manage it (e.g. add/keep only recently accessed files/dirs).

    The way to get a Dired buffer with an arbitrary list of files is to provide a cons argument to dired as its first arg - see the doc.

    If you use Dired+ then you can easily add files and dirs to an existing Dired buffer - see commands diredp-add-to-dired-buffer (C-x E in Dired) and diredp-add-to-this-dired-buffer. So you can easily add any recent files to any existing Dired buffer. See also command diredp-dired-union (C-x D in Dired).

    You could easily have one Dired buffer for only recent stuff, and you could add that, as a union, to any other Dired buffers. Or just add the recent stuff to any Dired buffer, without having a separate Dired buffer for just the recent stuff.

    There are lots of possibilities. The key is to know how to tell Dired to show an arbitrary list of files/dirs. That is little known and hardly documented. And with vanilla Dired there is no way to take advantage of it interactively - no commands that let you add files to a Dired listing or to create a union of existing Dired buffers. Dired+ makes it easy to do these kinds of things.

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  • Yes, I also use Bookmark+ extension, thanks for tip. But this is not what I mean. I'm specifically looking for a way to display quickjump/bookmark list in the dired window permamently, as in the screeshot above.
    – ReneFroger
    Nov 20, 2015 at 16:31
  • I explained that you can do that with Dired, but I've expanded this part in my edit. Use Dired+ and add recent files to any Dired buffer.
    – Drew
    Nov 20, 2015 at 17:08
  • Thanks for your help, Drew. It seems there is no package yet that provides an inline buffer below the Dired list of files, like Emacs-nav with quick-jump feature. As you stated in your answer, Dired+ provides many possiblies to do this, and the rest is on me to figure out the Elisp coding to make this possible in Dired (think of a hook, that insert the contents of bookmark-list buffer in the current Dired window). So I'll try to figure out, the documentation of Dired and Emacs Lisp is very good. I really appreciate your help, thanks for that.
    – ReneFroger
    Nov 20, 2015 at 22:19
  • Don't try to put bookmarks in a Dired buffer. You can either (1) use Dired bookmarks (and you can show bookmarks in *Bookmark List*, via C-x r l) or (probably what you want) (2) add particular entries (any files you like) to a Dired buffer. For #2, get the files you want from recentf-files, for instance.
    – Drew
    Nov 21, 2015 at 0:05
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Wow - old posts! I use a "bookmarks" directory I created in ~/.emacs.d/ which contains symbolic links to all the places I want to jump to, most often when I launch emacs. Then, in init.el I've added: '(initial-buffer-choice "~/.emacs.d/bookmarks/") Or is that just too simple? You could leave that buffer open in the position of your choice, giving the desired effect.

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    That's clever and simple. It's a good use of the underlying filesystem features.
    – g-gundam
    Jan 18 at 23:35

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