Bear in mind I think this is pretty crazy and I haven't tested the following, but something along these lines added to your .bashrc should work: set_per_di

Bear in mind I think this is pretty crazy and I haven't tested the following, but something along these lines added to your .bashrc should work: set_per_dir_history(){ history -a # append new history lines to the existing history file history -c # clear history list in memory export HISTFILE=$PWD/.bash_history # set new history file (uses .bash_history in the current directory) history -r # read the new history file into memory } export PROMPT_COMMAND="set_per_dir_history;$PROMPT_COMMAND" Personally I'd add some additional logic to the set_per_dir_history function, defaulting to ~/.bash_history and only whitelisting specific directories.