CHEATSHEET: Visual Studio Code - Common Shortcuts and Techniques on Windows

Visual Studio Code 🥰 is not just a code editor but also an extremely powerful all-purpose text editor. It has innumerable extensions, themes, settings, etc. that can help you set it up exactly the way you like it. However, what makes me really productive inside any program are keyboard shortcuts as I don’t have to lift my hands to press the mouse over and over. Listed below are some of the shortcuts that I regularly use:

Navigating text

• Home - navigate to the start of the line
• End - navigate to the end of the line
• Ctrl + ⬅/➡ - navigate one word at a time
• Ctrl + Shift + \ - jump between correspoding brackets in code
• Ctrl + ⬆/⬇ - scroll up or down without moving the cursor

Selecting Text

• Ctrl + Shift + ⬅/➡ - select one word at a time
• Shift + Alt + ⬅/➡ - expand AST (abstract syntax tree) select. It’ll smart select fragments based on the current context
• Ctrl + Shift + l - select all occurrences of current selection
• Alt + Click - enter multi cursor mode

Managing text

• Alt + ⬆/⬇ - move line(s) up or down
• Shift + Alt + ⬆/⬇ - copy line(s) up or down
• Alt + z - toggle word wrap