Visual Studio Code is an editor first and foremost, and includes the features you need for highly productive source code editing. This topic takes you through the basics of the editor and helps you get moving with your code.
Being able to keep your hands on the keyboard when writing code is crucial for high productivity. VS Code has a rich set of default keyboard shortcuts as well as allowing you to customize them.
Yesterday I found myself needing to zoom my Visual Studio text editor and was without a mouse (don't ask). Typically I do this by holding down CTRL and scrolling the mouse wheel. I also couldn't figure out how to tab into the area where you can specify your zoom level in the lower left hand corner of the text editor. Microsoft Word-like text editing and document formatting for Windows Forms. The NOV WinForms Rich Text Editor is an advanced text processing control designed to provide developers with an easy-to-use, professional WYSIWYG content and document editing capabilities. It comes with WinForm Example Solution including many Text Control examples with.
Visual Studio Code is a code editor redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications. Visual Studio Code is free and available on your favorite platform. An extension to allow you to snap your text editor to the left, right, top or bottom Visual Studio Code by a command. Installation Launch VS Code Quick Open ( Ctrl+P ). At its heart, Visual Studio Code is a code editor. Like many other code editors, VS Code adopts a common user interface and layout of an explorer on the left, showing all of the files and folders you have access to, and an editor on the right, showing the content of the files you have opened.
VS Code supports multiple cursors for fast simultaneous edits. You can add secondary cursors (rendered thinner) with Alt+Click. Each cursor operates independently based on the context it sits in. A common way to add more cursors is with ⌥⌘↓ (Windows Ctrl+Alt+Down, Linux Shift+Alt+Down) or ⌥⌘↑ (Windows Ctrl+Alt+Up, Linux Shift+Alt+Up) that insert cursors below or above.
Note: Your graphics card driver (for example NVIDIA) might overwrite these default shortcuts.
⌘D (Windows, Linux Ctrl+D) selects the word at the cursor, or the next occurrence of the current selection.
Tip: You can also add more cursors with ⇧⌘L (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+L), which will add a selection at each occurrence of the current selected text.
If you'd like to change the modifier key for applying multiple cursors to Cmd+Click on macOS and Ctrl+Click on Windows and Linux, you can do so with the editor.multiCursorModifier
setting. This lets users coming from other editors such as Sublime Text or Atom continue to use the keyboard modifier they are familiar with.
The setting can be set to:
ctrlCmd
- Maps to Ctrl on Windows and Cmd on macOS.alt
- The existing default Alt.There's also a menu item Use Ctrl+Click for Multi-Cursor in the Selection menu to quickly toggle this setting.
The Go To Definition and Open Link gestures will also respect this setting and adapt such that they do not conflict. For example, when the setting is ctrlCmd
, multiple cursors can be added with Ctrl/Cmd+Click, and opening links or going to definition can be invoked with Alt+Click.
Quickly shrink or expand the current selection. Trigger it with ⌃⇧⌘← (Windows, Linux Shift+Alt+Left) and ⌃⇧⌘→ (Windows, Linux Shift+Alt+Right).
Here's an example of expanding the selection with ⌃⇧⌘→ (Windows, Linux Shift+Alt+Right):
Place the cursor in one corner and then hold Shift+Alt while dragging to the opposite corner:
Note: This changes to Shift+Ctrl/Cmd when using Ctrl/Cmd as multi-cursor modifier.
There are also default key bindings for column selection on macOS and Windows, but not on Linux.
Key | Command | Command ID |
---|---|---|
⇧⌥⌘↓ (Windows Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Down, Linux ) | Column Select Down | cursorColumnSelectDown |
⇧⌥⌘↑ (Windows Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Up, Linux ) | Column Select Up | cursorColumnSelectUp |
⇧⌥⌘← (Windows Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Left, Linux ) | Column Select Left | cursorColumnSelectLeft |
⇧⌥⌘→ (Windows Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Right, Linux ) | Column Select Right | cursorColumnSelectRight |
⇧⌥⌘PageDown (Windows Ctrl+Shift+Alt+PageDown, Linux ) | Column Select Page Down | cursorColumnSelectPageDown |
⇧⌥⌘PageUp (Windows Ctrl+Shift+Alt+PageUp, Linux ) | Column Select Page Up | cursorColumnSelectPageUp |
You can edit your keybindings.json
to bind them to something more familiar if you wish.
The user setting Editor: Column Selection controls this feature. Once this mode is entered, as indicated in the Status bar, the mouse gestures and the arrow keys will create a column selection by default. This global toggle is also accessible via the Selection > Column Selection Mode menu item. In addition, one can also disable Column Selection mode from the Status bar.
By default, VS Code requires an explicit action to save your changes to disk, ⌘S (Windows, Linux Ctrl+S).
However, it's easy to turn on Auto Save
, which will save your changes after a configured delay or when focus leaves the editor. With this option turned on, there is no need to explicitly save the file. The easiest way to turn on Auto Save
is with the File > Auto Save toggle that turns on and off save after a delay.
For more control over Auto Save
, open User or Workspace settings and find the associated settings:
files.autoSave
: Can have the values: off
- to disable auto save.afterDelay
- to save files after a configured delay (default 1000 ms).onFocusChange
- to save files when focus moves out of the editor of the dirty file.onWindowChange
- to save files when the focus moves out of the VS Code window.files.autoSaveDelay
: Configures the delay in milliseconds when files.autoSave
is configured to afterDelay
. The default is 1000 ms.VS Code will remember unsaved changes to files when you exit by default. Hot exit is triggered when the application is closed via File > Exit (Code > Quit on macOS) or when the last window is closed.
You can configure hot exit by setting files.hotExit
to the following values:
'off'
: Disable hot exit.'onExit'
: Hot exit will be triggered when the application is closed, that is when the last window is closed on Windows/Linux or when the workbench.action.quit
command is triggered (from the Command Palette, keyboard shortcut or menu). All windows without folders opened will be restored upon next launch.'onExitAndWindowClose'
: Hot exit will be triggered when the application is closed, that is when the last window is closed on Windows/Linux or when the workbench.action.quit
command is triggered (from the Command Palette, keyboard shortcut or menu), and also for any window with a folder opened regardless of whether it is the last window. All windows without folders opened will be restored upon next launch. To restore folder windows as they were before shutdown, set window.restoreWindows
to all
.If something happens to go wrong with hot exit, all backups are stored in the following folders for standard install locations:
%APPDATA%CodeBackups
$HOME/Library/Application Support/Code/Backups
$HOME/.config/Code/Backups
VS Code allows you to quickly find text and replace in the currently opened file. Press ⌘F (Windows, Linux Ctrl+F) to open the Find Widget in the editor, search results will be highlighted in the editor, overview ruler and minimap.
If there are more than one matched result in the current opened file, you can press Enter and ⇧Enter (Windows, Linux Shift+Enter) to navigate to next or previous result when the find input box is focused.
When the Find Widget is opened, it will automatically populate the selected text in the editor into the find input box. If the selection is empty, the word under the cursor will be inserted into the input box instead.
This feature can be turned off by setting editor.find.seedSearchStringFromSelection
to false
.
By default, the find operations are run on the entire file in the editor. It can also be run on selected text. You can turn this feature on by clicking the hamburger icon on the Find Widget.
If you want it to be the default behavior of the Find Widget, you can set editor.find.autoFindInSelection
to always
, or to multiline
, if you want it to be run on selected text only when multiple lines of content are selected.
In addition to find and replace with plain text, the Find Widget also has three advanced search options:
The replace input box support case preserving, you can turn it on by clicking the Preserve Case (AB) button.
You can search multiple line text by pasting the text into the Find input box and Replace input box. Pressing Ctrl+Enter
inserts a new line in the input box.
While searching long text, the default size of Find Widget might be too small. You can drag the left sash to enlarge the Find Widget or double click the left sash to maximize it or shrink it to its default size.
VS Code allows you to quickly search over all files in the currently opened folder. Press ⇧⌘F (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+F) and enter your search term. Search results are grouped into files containing the search term, with an indication of the hits in each file and its location. Expand a file to see a preview of all of the hits within that file. Then single-click on one of the hits to view it in the editor.
Tip: We support regular expression searching in the search box, too.
You can configure advanced search options by clicking the ellipsis (Toggle Search Details) below the search box on the right (or press ⇧⌘J (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+J)). This will show additional fields to configure the search.
In the two input boxes below the search box, you can enter patterns to include or exclude from the search. If you enter example
, that will match every folder and file named example
in the workspace. If you enter ./example
, that will match the folder example/
at the top level of your workspace. Use ,
to separate multiple patterns. Paths must use forward slashes. You can also use glob syntax:
*
to match one or more characters in a path segment?
to match on one character in a path segment**
to match any number of path segments, including none{}
to group conditions (for example {**/*.html,**/*.txt}
matches all HTML and text files)[]
to declare a range of characters to match (example.[0-9]
to match on example.0
, example.1
, …)VS Code excludes some folders by default to reduce the number of search results that you are not interested in (for example: node_modules
). Open settings to change these rules under the files.exclude
and search.exclude
section.
Note that glob patterns in the search view work differently than in settings such as files.exclude
and search.exclude
. In the settings, you must use **/example
to match a folder named example
in subfolder folder1/example
in your workspace. In the search view, the **
prefix is assumed.
Also note the Use Exclude Settings and Ignore Files toggle button in the files to exclude box. The toggle determines whether to exclude files that are ignored by your .gitignore
files and/or matched by your files.exclude
and search.exclude
settings.
Tip: From the Explorer, you can right-click on a folder and select Find in Folder to search inside a folder only.
You can also Search and Replace across files. Expand the Search widget to display the Replace text box.
When you type text into the Replace text box, you will see a diff display of the pending changes. You can replace across all files from the Replace text box, replace all in one file or replace a single change.
Tip: You can quickly reuse a previous search term by using ↓ (Windows, Linux Down) and ↑ (Windows, Linux Up) to navigate through your search term history.
We'll always offer word completion, but for the rich languages, such as JavaScript, JSON, HTML, CSS, SCSS, Less, C# and TypeScript, we offer a true IntelliSense experience. If a language service knows possible completions, the IntelliSense suggestions will pop up as you type. You can always manually trigger it with ⌃Space (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Space). By default, Tab or Enter are the accept keyboard triggers but you can also customize these key bindings.
Tip: The suggestions filtering supports CamelCase so you can type the letters which are upper cased in a method name to limit the suggestions. For example, 'cra' will quickly bring up 'createApplication'.
Tip: IntelliSense suggestions can be configured via the editor.quickSuggestions
and editor.suggestOnTriggerCharacters
settings.
JavaScript and TypeScript developers can take advantage of the npmjs type declaration (typings) file repository to get IntelliSense for common JavaScript libraries (Node.js, React, Angular). You can find a good explanation on using type declaration files in the JavaScript language topic and the Node.js tutorial.
Learn more in the IntelliSense document.
VS Code has great support for source code formatting. The editor has two explicit format actions:
You can invoke these from the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)) or the editor context menu.
VS Code has default formatters for JavaScript, TypeScript, JSON, and HTML. Each language has specific formatting options (for example, html.format.indentInnerHtml
) which you can tune to your preference in your user or workspace settings. You can also disable the default language formatter if you have another extension installed that provides formatting for the same language.
Along with manually invoking code formatting, you can also trigger formatting based on user gestures such as typing, saving or pasting. These are off by default but you can enable these behaviors through the following settings:
editor.formatOnType
- Format the line after typing.editor.formatOnSave
- Format a file on save.editor.formatOnPaste
- Format the pasted content.Note: Not all formatters support format on paste as to do so they must support formatting a selection or range of text.
In addition to the default formatters, you can find extensions on the Marketplace to support other languages or formatting tools. There is a Formatters
category so you can easily search and find formatting extensions. In the Extensions view search box, type 'formatters' or 'category:formatters' to see a filtered list of extensions within VS Code.
You can fold regions of source code using the folding icons on the gutter between line numbers and line start. Move the mouse over the gutter and click to fold and unfold regions. Use Shift + Click on the folding icon to fold or unfold the region and all regions inside.
You can also use the following actions:
Folding regions are by default evaluated based on the indentation of lines. A folding region starts when a line has a smaller indent than one or more following lines, and ends when there is a line with the same or smaller indent.
Since the 1.22 release, folding regions can also be computed based on syntax tokens of the editor's configured language. The following languages already provide syntax aware folding: Markdown, HTML, CSS, LESS, SCSS, and JSON.
If you prefer to switch back to indentation-based folding for one (or all) of the languages above, use:
Regions can also be defined by markers defined by each language. The following languages currently have markers defined:
Language | Start region | End region |
---|---|---|
Bat | ::#region or REM #region | ::#endregion or REM #endregion |
C# | #region | #endregion |
C/C++ | #pragma region | #pragma endregion |
CSS/Less/SCSS | /*#region*/ | /*#endregion*/ |
Coffeescript | #region | #endregion |
F# | //#region or (#_region) | //#endregion or (#_endregion) |
Java | //#region or //<editor-fold> | // #endregion or //</editor-fold> |
Markdown | <!-- #region --> | <!-- #endregion --> |
Perl5 | #region or =pod | #endregion or =cut |
PHP | #region | #endregion |
PowerShell | #region | #endregion |
Python | #region or # region | #endregion or # endregion |
TypeScript/JavaScript | //#region | //#endregion |
Visual Basic | #Region | #End Region |
To fold and unfold only the regions defined by markers use:
VS Code lets you control text indentation and whether you'd like to use spaces or tab stops. By default, VS Code inserts spaces and uses 4 spaces per Tab key. If you'd like to use another default, you can modify the editor.insertSpaces
and editor.tabSize
settings.
VS Code analyzes your open file and determines the indentation used in the document. The auto-detected indentation overrides your default indentation settings. The detected setting is displayed on the right side of the Status Bar:
You can click on the Status Bar indentation display to bring up a dropdown with indentation commands allowing you to change the default settings for the open file or convert between tab stops and spaces.
Note: VS Code auto-detection checks for indentations of 2, 4, 6 or 8 spaces. If your file uses a different number of spaces, the indentation may not be correctly detected. For example, if your convention is to indent with 3 spaces, you may want to turn off editor.detectIndentation
and explicitly set the tab size to 3.
Set the file encoding globally or per workspace by using the files.encoding
setting in User Settings or Workspace Settings.
You can view the file encoding in the status bar.
Click on the encoding button in the status bar to reopen or save the active file with a different encoding.
Then choose an encoding.
You've covered the basic user interface - there is a lot more to VS Code. Read on to find out about:
Yes, expand the Search view text box to include a replace text field. You can search and replace across all the files in your workspace. Note that if you did not open VS Code on a folder, the search will only run on the currently open files.
You can control word wrap through the editor.wordWrap
setting. By default, editor.wordWrap
is off
but if you set to it to on
, text will wrap on the editor's viewport width.
You can toggle word wrap for the VS Code session with ⌥Z (Windows, Linux Alt+Z).
You can also add vertical column rulers to the editor with the editor.rulers
setting, which takes an array of column character positions where you'd like vertical rulers.