30 VSCode Keyboard Shortcuts You NEED to Know

Knowing your IDE and using keyboard shortcuts makes your life a lot easier. In this video, I share 30 of the most essential VSCode shortcuts that every developer should know.
⚬ Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows: code.visualstudio.com/shortcu...
⚬ Keyboard Shortcuts for macOS: code.visualstudio.com/shortcu...
👷 Join the FREE Code Diagnosis Workshop to help you review code more effectively using my 3-Factor Diagnosis Framework: www.arjancodes.com/diagnosis
💻 ArjanCodes Blog: www.arjancodes.com/blog
🎓 Courses:
The Software Designer Mindset: www.arjancodes.com/mindset
The Software Designer Mindset Team Packages: www.arjancodes.com/sas
The Software Architect Mindset: Pre-register now! www.arjancodes.com/architect
Next Level Python: Become a Python Expert: www.arjancodes.com/next-level...
The 30-Day Design Challenge: www.arjancodes.com/30ddc
🛒 GEAR & RECOMMENDED BOOKS: kit.co/arjancodes.
👍 If you enjoyed this content, give this video a like. If you want to watch more of my upcoming videos, consider subscribing to my channel!
💬 Discord: discord.arjan.codes
🐦Twitter: / arjancodes
🌍LinkedIn: / arjancodes
🕵Facebook: / arjancodes
📱Instagram: / arjancodes
👀 Code reviewers:
- Yoriz
- Ryan Laursen
- James Dooley
- Dale Hagglund
🎥 Video edited by Mark Bacskai: / bacskaimark
🔖 Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:40 General tips
2:29 Hide or show elements
4:03 Zen mode
4:58 Files
5:58 Navigating through files
8:21 Navigating through taps
10:39 Text Editing Shortcuts
11:05 Multi-select Cursor
13:00 Settings and Shortcuts
13:55 BONUS tip
15:14 Useless extras
#arjancodes #softwaredesign #python
DISCLAIMER - The links in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service through one of those links, I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you. Thanks for supporting my channel so I can continue to provide you with free content each week!

[@ArjanCodes]

👷 Join the FREE Code Diagnosis Workshop to help you review code more effectively using my 3-Factor Diagnosis Framework: www.arjancodes.com/diagnosis

[@gabrielem_]

Another command I use very often is ctrl + alt + '-' (hyphen) which brings you back to previous places your cursor was at, which is useful when you go through multiple lines of code in multiple files either because you're reading the code, debugging or switching between files implementing/modifying multiple things across them. It's a fast way to "go back to where I left that other function/line I was writing before writing this".

[@gijovarughesemathew5479]

Is this different to using alt+right/left arrow?

[@tubeincompetence]

@@gijovarughesemathew5479 I noticed my windows VS code used alt+arrow and in Linux vm it uses ctrl +alt+hyphen.

[@akin.kilic.]

Isn't this just CMD + U called 'Cursor Undo' ?

[@tubeincompetence]

@@akin.kilic. They are a bit different it seems but I haven't been digging that deep. But cursor undo is just undo of latest cursor movement. The "Go back" is more going back to where ju previously "jumped from". So F12 to go to a function definition and then moving the cursor with arrow keys would give "Cursor undo" to go back those small steps and "Go back" would jump to where you were before you pressed F12.

[@davidmasipbonet2508]

does anyone know how to do this in mac?

[@BabakKeyvani0]

Loved the insightful messages at the end 😅 thanks for all the great content Arjan. Happy holidays. Also the point on switching the settings to its JSON version was cool 😎 I always had to use cmd+shift+P and search for settings (JSON).

[@ArjanCodes]

Thank you Babak, glad is was helpful!

[@wanderingempress314]

Was on the verge of looking up these shortcuts myself--thanks for sharing! I'm not in touch with my local community yet (still very green in my studies) and I forgot I had lo-fi Xmas playing in another tab, so the two minutes of coffee was actually really nice. Happy holidays to Arjan & co.

[@ajflorido]

really enjoy the last part of the video! :D The human touch of a coder. Thanks Arjan

[@ArjanCodes]

Glad you liked it!

[@ujjawalsinha8968]

Alt + Shift + I to put cursor on all the lines. I use it quite a lot when I am writing SQL queries and I have to prepare comma seperated values.

[@tthompson5707]

I was just looking these shortcuts up recently so nice to have a video for them too :)

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks so much, glad the content is helpful!

[@AlexanderLyashuk]

It would be nice to have a follow up video specifically about pane/window navigation. How to split pane in two, now to move file to another pane, how to swap buffer, how to close all unsaved editors in a group etc. Surprisingly, those shortcuts are not listed in the "official" pdf cheatsheet and there are too many of them, but I think that not remembering them is the most frequent reason to use mouse in VSCode.

[@viakondratiuk]

Love u man for that extras!

[@edgeeffect]

Thank you so much for zooming in on code in your videos... it's one of the things that makes your videos much much better than a lot of what we see on youTube... any opportunity I get to say this in context I will, because it's very very important (other creators please take note). :)

[@ArjanCodes]

Thank you so much!

[@user-xw5cg7by6t]

This video is really great!! My life is extended for ten years!!

[@Vijay-Yarramsetty]

thanks for the hardwork you are putting together.

[@ArjanCodes]

I appreciate that!

[@JonBrookes]

Hi Arjan, this is very usefull, thanks for posting. I liked especially your combined use of Vim and VSCode shortcuts. I have found in the past that at least some Vim plugin extentions I used in VSC didnt play well with various keyboard shortcuts, for example the alt-up/down ( windows ) in order to reposition text but this clearly must have improved - I will revisit this thanks to your kindly reminder in this video as I have much missed having k-j-h-l navigation and the like from vi and vim when in VSCode. I watched all the way to the end of the video so I also am tenacious. Well worth doing so and made me laugh. We all need something to cheer us up these days. Quality stuff.

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks so much Jon, glad the content is helpful!

[@drewberchtolzthofen886]

Great! Thank you.

[@ArjanCodes]

You are welcome!

[@RufusVidS]

Great tips that would have saved me hours by now if I knew them! Grabbing the cheat sheets. Also, love your post-content commentary!

[@ArjanCodes]

Thank you Rufus!

[@2BiTeddy]

I loved the last few minutes of the video, after most everyone had gone. haha, made my day!

[@ArjanCodes]

Thank you, haha! I'm glad you enjoyed the content :)

[@apefu]

This was surprisingly useful! I am very much a keyboard shortcut user, but I've never tried some of these. For some reason I decided to go along and the first new thing I tried was zen-mode. I used to think it was a useless feature, but OMG it felt so nice when I tried it! I also had some trouble with multi-cursor actions so I went digging in the documentation. The command name is really useful because when you press Ctrl+Shift+p and type it you get the shortcut, and you also see some thing that you might want to use - Ctrl+D (Add Selection to Find Next Match) is fine and all, but Ctrl+Shift+L is glorious(Select All Occurences of Find Match) :) There is also settings in the top right corner to toggle case sensitivity and match whole words only.

[@ArjanCodes]

Glad that it was helpful!

[@aashayamballi]

Thank you Arjan 👍

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks so much Aashay, glad the content is helpful!

[@adjaythakoerdien]

Great video! I like the Pycharm (Jetbrains) shortcuts. Especially the refactoring shortcuts. Makes me feel like a 10x developer 🤣

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks Adjay, happy you’re enjoying the content!

[@farkore]

Thanks for all those tips, you look a nice guy. Thank you!

[@ArjanCodes]

So nice of you!

[@PedigreeGuitars]

😂 Top ending Arjen!! Merry Christmas!

[@ArjanCodes]

Thank you - happy holidays!

[@Jarek.]

Merry X-Mas! 🧑‍🎄Thanks for this Christmas Tree with VSC shortcuts 🎄

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks you so much Jarek, glad you liked the video! Merry Christmas 🎄🎅

[@pittixixitosilveira3876]

That useless extras captivated my heart! lol take my like Anjan!

[@ArjanCodes]

Thank you so much 😊

[@123arskas]

Loved the "Christmas Break" shortcut at the end of video.

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks so much Arslan, glad you liked it!

[@azy3929]

Very dense and useful tutorial

[@ArjanCodes]

Glad you liked it!

[@loic1665]

CTRL + K to delete the whole current line. Super useful Also CTRL+click on a variable and if you do that multiple times you can go back with CTRL + page left/right

[@robertwolinski7294]

Interesting, showing and hiding the terminal for me is Cmd+J on my mac and Ctrl+J on my windows PC. I'm still glad I looked into the setting, regardless if it's the same as what you have.

[@robbybobbyhobbies]

Some useful tips here. Spotted a couple of typos: "visual typo" at 2:33 - you say "backtick" but the onscreen icon is the left arrow. 4:28 I think you say "P" but you've transcribed it as "B". On my machine the palette is brought up with Shift-Command-P.

[@LewisCowles]

You might be interested in staging and unstaging lines / selection (sadly is lines under the hood in vscode), intellij and gittower support ticking / committing individual lines. For cases where you need to git reset and refactor commits, or turn a big blob of experiment into structured and meaningful commits.

[@derekbaker_]

This has been one of the best coding channels I’ve found. Thank you 🙏

[@ArjanCodes]

Thank you!

[@allo5668]

Hey Arjan, could you make a video on how to organize the actual files in a package? I find it non trivial to find other files using relative paths, especially once something is converted to a package you can import from elsewhere

[@JuliusKaesar]

Hey Arjen, could you perhaps make a video on debugging Python modules with VS Code? How do you debug programs with complex functions?

[@PoleVault044]

+1

[@yeetdeets]

Unit tests and print statements. Proper type hints help.

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks for the suggestions, Aaron, I've put it on the list.

[@kosmonautofficial296]

Great video! Thanks I am going to start using some of these right away. Easily getting to the explorer tab, opening a file, and switching tabs is going to be really helpful. Also I have been drinking a lot of coffee as well and probably need to slow down. #tenaciouslyWatchedToTheEnd

[@kosmonautofficial296]

I was hoping at the end you would mention ctrl-z haha

[@dmytrokorbanytskyi1586]

awesome final )

[@ArjanCodes]

Glad you liked it 😊

[@Whitify]

Cmd + L selects the current line Cmd + shift + d selects the next value that currently highlighted (multi line cursor) Cmd + shift + L select all the values that are currently highlighted. Added vs code shortcut extension to data grip because they are so useful.

[@sumanroy2308]

love your hardwork sir ❤

[@ioannisnikolaospappas6703]

Thanks for the video Arjan! Especially for the ☕ end 😂😂 Another useful shortcut I use on Linux is leaving a cursor on a variable and pressing F7 to navigate between its instances in the file. Have a great weekend and go 🥜 😂

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks so much Ioannis, glad the content is helpful!

[@CdotDixon]

For the last tip on colourizing windows, there's an extension called Peacock which also does this very nicely too

[@ArjanCodes]

Nice, thanks for the tip!

[@Doppelwulf]

I loved the blooper reel on this one :)

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks, happy you’re enjoying the content!

[@dokick2746]

Imo a better way of interacting with the panel at the bottom is with Ctrl+J. Similar to Ctrl+B for the side panel, Ctrl+J toggles the panel no matter if you are in the terminal, the debug console, output tab or the problems tab. VSCode also memorizes which your last tab was, so if you toggle the panel inside of the terminal and you open it up again, the terminal shows up

[@whonayem01]

Thanks

[@ArjanCodes]

You’re welcome!

[@pauldroppie]

Thanks for the video’s. I normally am one of the ‘get in, get data, get out’ type of people. Glad I prolonged my visit this time and got to see your coffee addiction and your acting skills.

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks Paul, happy you’re enjoying the content!

[@yoannthomann]

Hello, you may like the "Code Ace Jumper" VSCode extention to move quickly your cursor without mouse.

[@CynicalOldDwarf]

There's an extension (Window Colors) which adds a randomised title bar colour to workspaces which I find quite handy, it does save them in the .vscode folder too so they're consistent between sessions and machines. Very useful when you occasionally have to edit the Live environment so you've got both environments open in different VSC windows and don't want to accidentally make changes in the wrong one.

[@gijovarughesemathew5479]

The extension is called Peacock, for those wondering

[@arminzaugg1929]

sounds great. Can you share a link to the extension?

[@CynicalOldDwarf]

@@arminzaugg1929 The one I'm using is Window Colors by Stuart Robinson, which is a nice simple extension. Peacock which Gijo recommended looks a lot more feature rich, and is still maintained though.

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks for the tip!

[@Chuck1988]

I stayed 😅 hope you had a good weekend!

[@BReijling]

Bedankt

[@ArjanCodes]

Graag gedaan!

[@xiggywiggs]

discovering the alt + up / down shortcut is literally the singular reason I started using IDEs *way back* in 2019... before that I was all in on the insanely stupid "scrappy hacker haxoring with a text editor" thing like an idiot, didn't know about the alt shift one though! thanks as always! PS. the end gags are perfection!

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks a lot!

[@Whatthetrash]

This is fantastic! Thank you so much for this! :) (and I am tenacious. Thank you.^_^)

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks so much Mike, glad you liked it! :)

[@95SUJITH]

Very Helpful Video. Can you make another one for VIM shortcuts?

[@ArjanCodes]

Great suggestion, thank you!

[@voxelfusion9894]

The Vim plugin has been serving me very well so far.

[@RatafakRatafak]

I have two more useful:) - F7 when on object name takes you to the next occurence of this object in current file - Shift Del deletes current row

[@WarrenBey]

Recently installed neovim+astrovim+neovide and setup rust debugger because I'm currently learning rust. I have the same debugger as vscode, rust-analyzer and astrovim provides a menu with leader key. Vscode extensions are nice but having access to real vim all the old vim extensions and newer nvim extensions feels like a larger ecosphere. Then you aren't pinned down to vscode test runners. Rust has some amazing test libraries like Bacon. Also you can have multiple window options like vertical splits horizontal amd floating. Search in vscode is nice but using regex or fuzzy finding in vim is faster and more flexible. I'm sure there are very similar tools for python. I have a complete bash script to instantly create a new rust setup. If anyone needs help HMU.

[@GureiFokkusu84]

Lol a software engineer, AND comedian merry xmas!

[@ArjanCodes]

Merry Christmas!

[@gabrielscotafernandes1461]

Could you make a similar video to Pycharm IDE?

[@RoyAAD]

Love the end. 😂

[@jags78]

I really feel you in the last 2 min. Cracking coffee and to much bones... or was it the other way round?

[@TheStickofWar]

If you use Jetbrains products like me, then look into the intellij keybinding extension. Used this for years, cannot learn 2 sets of shortcuts, already have vim for terminal and Jetbrains keybindings for everything else

[@ChrisHalden007]

What a timing. Just downloaded a vscode shortcuts cheatsheet yesterday evening 😂

[@prashlovessamosa]

Share cheatsheet link please

[@joshajiniran]

Kindly share friend

[@ryanz2001]

Does anyone know if there are keyboard covers for VS code, similar to those for Adobe?

[@asadhussain2598]

How did you delete the entire line? And how to delete the entire line after current cursor?

[@NicolasChanCSY]

Thanks for your shortcuts! I think it's just me, but since I used Notepad++ and PyCharm mainly before starting to use VSCode, and I still use Notepad++ and PyCharm sometimes, I think the shortcuts in VSCode are not as intuitive...

[@ArjanCodes]

Thank you Nicolas, glad you liked the video!

[@StormcrowOV]

heyyyy Have you ever tried Colombian coffee? Juan Valdez the best one :) and yeah useful video :)

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks Luis, I will definitely try it one day. :) glad you liked the video!

[@labombarde1]

How about moving a block of code to the right or left? Can't find a simple answer to this simple question anywhere. I got it... My Column Selection Mode was on

[@sorvex9]

Do you even vim ?

[@beastmo4377]

alt + right arrow, ctrl + shft + L, easy quick find & replace

[@GuyWicks]

ctrl-/ That is going to save me so much time.

[@DJORedbad72]

Stil not convinced to ditch my old vim edior. ;-)

[@tascsolutions6483]

PyCharm has a plugin that conditions one to use a keyboard more called Key Promoter X. I have found it helpful, but also annoying. Haven't checked if vscode has one.

[@adamstrejcovsky8257]

that extras :D

[@5thbatman]

why not vim/neovim

[@heroe1486]

Because people like to make their life harder, vim keybindings are 1 more efficient and 2 reproducibles pretty much everywhere

[@5thbatman]

@@heroe1486 and still relevant with current state… in my opinion, coding environment is much personal for developers why not customize and create it for our own purposes and finally it’s so open source no one would need to pay (pycharge)

[@GustavoLeig]

Which keyboard brand model is this?

[@christender3614]

Looks like a Launch Lite by System76 to me, but I’m not fully sure.

[@ew3995]

Any shortcuts for fetching them branching from main, so painful!!!

[@TNothingFree]

2:34 what is backtech? (Backspace?) What key is that

[@ArjanCodes]

It's the backtick: `

[@TNothingFree]

@@ArjanCodes Thanks, I think the image is wrong there

[@RocketLR]

Hands down my most used shortcuts are shift + alt + right arrow to select the entire variables. shift + alt + up or down arrow to copy the code up or down. alt + up or down to move the code up or down. Then i made my own shift + alt + a to select a parent div and all its child elements instead of looking for where the parent ends.

[@amirreza1446]

control + k + z wasn't in the windows as much as I tried.

[@chuckmdonaldson]

smallest coffee cup ever, lol

[@vbaclasses3553]

Love the useless extras segment 🤣👍

[@ArjanCodes]

Glad you liked it 😊

[@AlexanderLyashuk]

It looks like someone edits a video for you, and they misheard a few shortcuts. When you say "Ctrl+backtick", "Ctrl+backspace" is shown instead. Same with e.g. "Ctrl+Shift+P" shown as "Ctrl+Shift+B". And I'm only 4.5 minutes through the video so far!

[@sohamtilekar5126]

Zooming Shortcut is Ctr + +/=, Zooming Out is Ctr + -

[@user-wr4yl7tx3w]

Idea. Explain workspace in VS Code. Still very confusing.

[@metal571]

It treats folders as workspaces, and it's as simple as that. If you put config files in there under another folder called .vscode e.g. settings.json, tasks.json, and launch.json, it will also pick those files up and use them.

[@detemegandy]

command terminal is CTRL + SHIFT + P not B

[@nathanmiddleton1478]

I've been using JOE editor for years and been trying to acclimate to VS Code. It's hard retraining those muscles! My first editor was a Notepad back in the early 90s for all of my HTML, sh, and Perl needs. Now it's mostly just bash, python, and C++ and VS Code offers some really nice features, especially for being freemium. Just wish I could use it on my console.

[@tacozmacleo]

Is that coffee mug really small, or are you just that big? 0.o

[@PerisMartin]

There is no such thing as a “vim noob”, opening vim automatically makes you a bad ass

[@_DRMR_]

Meh, you should've added Linux, because I noticed that some of these are different from windows (ie. Command Palette is ctrl+shift+p)

[@luizprestes6795]

because I have fat fingers. I needed to remove Ctrl + W... So many annoying moments because of that shortcut.

[@sjmarel]

Or a completist

[@UNgineering]

you should add useless extras to more of your videos :)

[@halconnen]

furst

[@christophereeles3343]

The content to sponsor ratio trends in a disappointing direction

[@ArjanCodes]

What do you mean? This video is not sponsored.

[@MiningForPies]

Stopped watching at the mention of VIM. That is hell on earth

[@tangocukedi1]

itd be actually really cool if you didnt use your mouse for this video esp when youre on vscode

[@jkrigelman]

No vim!?! Just lost all credibility. :)

[@PiErDzoncy7]

Pycharm is better 😀

[@jags78]

Oh, someone whats to start a war :D emacs vs vim, iPhone vs Android, Windows vs Linux and now this... Let's goooo !!

[@trenwar]

Notepad++ is better

[@axelrod-_-]

But need to pay

[@nielsbom5558]

Real programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

[@RufusVidS]

@@trenwar Notepad++ has the PythonScript add-in which allows you to do all kinds of tricks with your files. I use it to reformat log files all the time!