Issue #18 (Editing Keyboard Shortcuts)08/24/22
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Many developers prefer working only with the keyboard when inside their IDE. I personally don't mind switching from mouse to keyboard and back again multiple times during coding sessions. But if you prefer to use the keyboard as much as possible, you'll want to be familiar with the options available for learning and customizing the shortcuts, also called keybindings, in VS Code.
To view all the current keyboard shortcuts, you can do one of the following:
- From the main menu, choose File (or Code on Mac) > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts
- Use the combination keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD-K + CTRL/CMD-S
- In the command palette search for "keyboard shortcuts" and choose the option "Open Keyboard Shortcuts".
You'll see the something like the following:
You can hit Enter, double-click, or right-click and choose "Change Keybinding" to edit any of the existing shortcuts. Inside the little edit window that appears, you can simply mimic your new keybinding and the appropriate change will appear in the window before you save it. Usefully, VS Code will tell you if the keybinding already exists, so you can determine whether or not to replace the existing one.
Microsoft has set up some online links that point to PDF versions of the keybindings, so you can print those out or have them open in a separate window if you wish:
When searching for "keyboard shortcuts" in the command palette, you'll notice there's also two options to open shortcuts as JSON files. One is the default shortcuts, the same as what appears in the visual view of the shortcuts. The other file is where you hold your own keybindings — whether they're new ones you've added or bindings you've changed from the defaults.
This is useful to have your own keybindings separated like this because it
allows you to share your keybindings with others, port them to another editor, or just keep them as a backup (e.g. by saving them to GitHub or elsewhere). It's also useful should you want to delete a keybinding, which you can do either directly in the JSON file or by searching for that keybinding in the UI view of the keybindings.
And one last thing I'll mention about keybindings is that often certain keyboard shortcuts will do different things depending on the context. Usually that's fine, but in some cases,
there could be a conflict that causes problems for you. If you right-click any of the keyboard bindings in the UI view list, you can choose "Show Same Keybindings" to see any potential conflicts related to that keyboard shortcut. An easy example is the use of the ESC key, which does different things depending on the context.
From there, you can determine if you need to make any changes. In the case of ESC, it's unlikely you'll need to make an adjustment. Mostly you'll want to check this sort of thing after you've made many of your own custom bindings, or possibly you're using numerous extensions that have caused a conflict.
Now on to this week's hand-picked links!
