Open ranger File-Manager in specific Directory

Question

I use ranger as my file-manager and was looking for an option that i can pass to ranger, that let‘s me open ranger in a given directory, something like ranger —specfic-directory=„/home/tim/literature/„ or something alike. Neither ranger —help, nor the manpage offered an answer, at least none that i understood. I can‘t imagine that such an option doesn‘t exist!

Answer 1

You can just ranger /home/Louis/whatever

This works just fine without any arguments

Answer 2

You can execute ranger --cmd='cd ~/Desktop'

Answer 3

If you want to set default directory each time you open ranger irrespective of the directory in which the terminal opened then,

add this line to you .bashrc or whatever corresponding shell you're using

alias ranger="ranger path/to/your/directory"

Answer 4

Open ranger at given directory

I am not the author of this function, I founded several years ago somewhere that I don't remember. put it in your .aliases at your home directory for both zsh or bash or whatever.

##################################################
#       This function is working with ranger
#       using Capital (Q) to exit ranger to
#       the last specified directory in ranger.
##################################################
function ranger-cd {
    local IFS=$'\t\n'
    local tempfile="$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXX)"
    local ranger_cmd=(
        command
        ranger
        --cmd="map Q chain shell echo %d > "$tempfile"; quitall"
    )

    ${ranger_cmd[@]} "$@"
    if [[ -f "$tempfile" ]] && [[ "$(cat -- "$tempfile")" != "$(echo -n `pwd`)" ]]; then
        cd -- "$(cat "$tempfile")" || return
    fi
    command rm -f -- "$tempfile" 2>/dev/null
}

alias ranger=ranger-cd

How to use

• While navigate in ranger, using upper-case (Q) keybinding to exit ranger, and it will exit at the last navigated directory. Notice that alias ranger=ranger-cd is must be also added to your .aliases file.