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23 lesser known VS Code Shortcuts as GIF

Andreas on January 07, 2020

Despite many shortcuts I'm using frequently in VS Code, the following ones can come in very handy but I'm often forgetting they even exist. I made ...
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Yuriy Markov

Cool article! 👍
If will be nice to add a MacOS shortcut as well.

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Andreas

Thank you! As I wrote at the top of the article:

I use VS Code on Windows here, if you are on a Mac, most of the Shortcuts should work using for CTRL, for ALT and for SHIFT.

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Yuriy Markov

That's not always correct. You can check out my post about shortcuts in Visual Studio Code
dev.to/peacefullatom/productivity-...

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Andreas

Nice article layout and many thanks for the feedback! I will see how I can include MacOS shortcuts as well!

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Yuriy Markov

You're welcome!
Tip: you can ask the community to help you 😊

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Andreas

Updated the article accordingly 😇

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Yuriy Markov

Whoa! Well done! 👍👊

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Andreas

Thank you for the inspiration! 👍🏻

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Yuriy Markov

You're welcome! 👍

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Andrew Colclough

Can I just say, it's nice to see people in comments helping each other out? I guess you just see criticism so often, it's nice to see folks working together to make something great. Makes for an awesome community. Thanks guys!

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Yuriy Markov

Welcome to the club! Glad you've joined! 👍

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Graham Dyson

I stopped plugging in a mouse, touchpad etc several months ago on my dev machine (I do have a mousekeys AutoHotkey script). It definitely encouraged me to find those keyboard shortcuts. Not so good for web browsing tho. VSCode is probably going to wear out my F1 key! 😄⌨

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Andreas

Wow, not using a mouse at all is impressive! 😲👏🏻 Maybe I'll try that too sometimes!

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Graham Dyson

I do also have a portable with touch screen and pen to do any graphics and cad stuff on. But just a keyboard front and centre on the dev desktop 😇
my mousekeys script is on the following gist if you ever want to try it out: gist.github.com/grahamdyson/3029ef...

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Andreas

Cool! Thank you for sharing!

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Tom Nicklin

Select some characters, a var name or whatever. ctrl+D is my favourite, although not the quickest way, to select the next occurrence of what you currently have selected. Habits I guess.

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Vaibhav Khulbe

Wow. I always wondered how to select a line using a keyboard. It's so simple and easy shortcut for which I had to point to the line and then select it using the cursor. This will save a lot of time. Also, that open in explorer shortcut is also a great one. Thanks for this!

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Andreas

I'm really glad it's useful for you! It was the same here before I knew that line selecting shortcut 😅

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Alberto Chiesa

I prefer the use of HOME and END to go to start/end of line, coupled with SHIFT when I need to select. So HOME, followed by SHIFT-END is just the same as select line, and a lot easier to memorize, for me.

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Shaiju T

Thanks , this will be great help. Curious to know which shortcuts do you use frequently in your work ?

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Andreas • Edited

You're welcome. Sure, I highlighted them for you:

Frequently used shortcuts by devmount in VS Code

Those are the shortcuts I use every day.

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Shaiju T • Edited

What about Ctrl +` - Shows integrated terminal ? By the way thanks for the image. Appreciate 😄.

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Andreas

Also a good one, but I don't need it since I have the integrated terminal always open in each of my workspaces 😇

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Kevin Loughead

Ctrl +` also selects the terminal, which is great for rapid fire git commits! Etc.

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Andreas

Awesome, didn't know this 👏🏻

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Henry

What software or tool did you use to display those keyboard shortcuts on your screen as you typed them?

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Andreas

I'm using ScreenToGif. It's a really useful open source tool to quickly create screencasts. The shortcuts can to be inserted in editing mode.

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Henry

Thank you so much!!

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Andreas

You're welcome 😊

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Nick Taylor

Learnt some new shortcuts. Thanks for sharing!

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Andreas

So cool! I'm happy it's useful for you!

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David Kanekanian

Actually, the fastest way to switch tabs without using the mouse is using Alt + {n} where n is the tab index.

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Andreas

Agreed! Thank you for this addition!

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Kiril Lukiyan

This is a collection of good and useful shortcuts for everybody. Though they are not lesser known. Using 95% of them all the time since switching to vscode

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Andreas

Thank you for your feedback! So you're a real VS Code pro user! Which command didn't you already know (the 5%)?

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Kiril Lukiyan • Edited

3)CTRL+R (such a good one, I somehow didn't know or think about it before)
19)CTRL+K CTRL+X

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Andreas

Well so I'm glad, that there were at least 2 shortcuts that were helpful for you too 😅

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Russ

Great read, thank you for sharing! Now I just need to practice some of them to help remember them.

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Andreas

You're welcome! So do I 😅

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Russ

After I read the article I immediately needed to use one of them and forgot the shortcut but remembered it's possible 😬

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Andreas

😂 Well, do this a couple more times and you won't forget anymore 😅

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Nguyen Duy Khoa

Thanks a lot

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Andreas

You're welcome ☺️

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Priscilla

This was super helpful, thank you! I enjoyed your use of gifs to show the shortcuts in action 😃 bookmarking this for later.

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Andreas

Awesome 👍🏻 Happy to oblige!

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Obieda Ananbeh

Thank you!
This is awesome

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Andreas

I'm glad you like it 😊

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Vivek KrishnaKumar

This is so useful

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Christian Lutz

Good work! 👍

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Andreas

Thank You 😊

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Calvin

Thank you! Great tips!

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Andreas

You're welcome 😊

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Zane Milakovic

Really great write up. Thank you!

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SairamNagothu

Great job..

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Andreas

Thank you 😊

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randompch

Useful article ! Didn't even know there was a Zen Mode 🤷‍♂️

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Andreas

I'm glad it was helpful 😊

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Batuhan

Thanks for the tips mate <3

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Andreas

You're welcome! 😊

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Meir Gabay

This is how a tutorial should be written, well done. Thank you

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Random Rambler

Thank you. You inspired me: dwim.nl/2020-01-16-VSCode%20shortc...

I was wondering: Do you (or anyone else) know of a VSCode extension that advices on shortcuts for actions you perform often?

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Andreas

Cool! 👏🏻 I'm glad it's useful for you!

I don't know an extension, but if you perform an action with the command prompt CTRL+SHIFT+P you can directly see the defined shortcuts on the right:

command prompt shortcuts

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Edydeyemi

Thanks. This will come in really handy

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Andreas

You're welcome, I'm glad it helps!

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Andreas

You're welcome - I'm glad you like it! 😊

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Conner Ow

How did you make those
GIF images?

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Andreas

See this answer:

I'm using ScreenToGif. It's a really useful open source tool to quickly create screencasts. The shortcuts can to be inserted in editing mode.

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Andreas

💪🏻👌🏻

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Hanan Hamza

for the "go-to-line" you can also do ctrl+p and then :{line_number}

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Andreas

Which is why I wrote at the end of point 5:

This is the shortcut for typing CTRL+P :.

👍🏻

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Arda İpek

Thanks a lot Andreas 👍

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Andreas

My pleasure 😊