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When I place my cursor at any position inside a text like the string in this photo, vs code automatically mildly highlights the entire string. Is there any shortcut key for selecting and copying this entire text highlighted by vs code?
Example: String being mildly highlighted by vs code How to select/copy this with a keyboard shortcut?
Update:
Added gif to show the highlighting - gif showing the highlighting
There's not a single, builtin keyboard shortcut for the behavior you described, but you can use a combination of two to achieve the result you want:
The first is called "Expand Selection" in the VS Code app, and the online keybindings documentation describes it as "Expand AST Selection" (editor.action.smartSelect.expand). The default platform keybindings for this are:
linux: shift + alt + right
mac: shift + ctrl + cmd + right
win: shift + alt + right
If the highlighted string is one word, it will require one use, and if the string is multi-word, it will require two uses.
After that, the selection will be complete, and you can simply copy (cmd/ctrl + c).
Demo:
If in a string, triggering the command editor.action.smartSelect.grow a couple of times should select that entire string. And then you can copy the normal way Ctrl+C.
That command is unbound by default. You can assign a keybinding to it in the Keyboard Shortcuts editor by searching for smartSelect and click on the little pencil icon next to the command.
What is the best way to select a block of code in VSCode?
Is there any shortCut, which we can use?
You've probably got this by now, but what you need to do is search the Keyboard Shortcuts for the shift+alt+arrow mappings, and swap the cursorColumnSelect commands (currently mapped to ctrl+shift+alt+arrow) with the commands that are currently mapped to the desired keys.
Depends on the language, it was already asked btw.
Check this, works with HTML and JS
Also pressing Ctrl + I + up/down arrow will select the whole next line.
You can press SHIFT and select code with arrow keys.
Is there a keyboard shortcut or an extension that would allow me to select a block of code?
I'd like to select everything between curly braces, between HTML tags, etc.
Use Alt + Shift + → to expand the selection between braces or tags.
Use Alt + Shift + ← to shrink the selection between braces or tags.
Here is the Microsoft Visual C++ shortcuts cheatsheet that might help you.
Update 2019/3: this inner functionality of Visual Studio is not working very well after some updates. Alt + Shift + → now selects things including braces (which annoys me).
It is not like its behavior before. It selected things between curly braces, when I first posted this answer. I'm using Mark's answer now.
If anyone has a better solution (without an extension) now, please leave a comment.
On Mac Ctrl + Shift + → to expand the selection. Press multiple times to expand to the block.
Try the expand-region extension. It currently works for JavaScript and HTML. To select ever-increasing or decreasing scope.
A quicker way is selecting a line then expanding the selection like this:
Select line Ctrl + L
Expand selection Alt + Shift + →
Doing this inside a block (HTML element, JavaScript curly braces) will select the inner block (HTML element content, inside curly braces). Do step 2 again to select block including the container (HTML element, whole function, class, etc.)
In Visual Studio Code, there is a new option called Balance. First you can place the cursor in a suitable block. After that, you can press Ctrl + Shift + P. Type balance and it lists like below.
Now press Enter, it will select the related code block like below.
For simple use, you can add a shortcut key binding.
A real working solution:
Press Command + P and search for Select to Bracket
To bind it to a key, press the little Settings icon on the right. The "Keyboard Shortcuts" Window will appear as shown in the image. Double-click on Select to Bracket and press a Keyboard shortcut you like, for example Command + Shift + H.
Now, whenever you want to select code in a block, put your cursor inside the block and press your shortcut.
It is like magic.
⌃⇧⌘← or ⌃⇧⌘→is also useful for this purpose.
A real working solution:
Search for Select to Bracket and bind it to whatever keys you like.
It is like magic.
If you are using Java in Visual Studio Code and you don't want your block selection to include the brackets (or any other peripheral character) then do the following:
Go to Visual Studio Code settings by pressing Ctrl + ,.
Search for "Java selection range" and deselect it.
How to select the current word, that is where the caret is at.
Note: I am looking for the shortcut for Visual Studio Code(VS Code), the text editor, and not Visual Studio IDE.
On Mac OS: Cmd+D
On Windows & Linux: Ctrl+D
Above solved the purpose for me.
But ⌘D is defined as "editor.action.addSelectionToNextFindMatch", so if you press it more than once, it will try to search and select same word in the file which then can be used to do "multi word editing".
You are looking for Shrink/Expand Selection.
Trigger it with Shift+ Alt+Left and Shift + Alt+Right
Update:
This is now called Smart select API.
This feature uses semantic knowledge to intelligently expand selections for expressions, types, statements, classes, and imports.
It is Ctrl + D that works for me in latest Visual Studio Code on Windows.
Go to File -> Preferences -> Keyboard shortcuts, you will find this:
If you want to ctrl+w to behave the same as in Idea just go keyboard settings
Search for Expand selection. Set new shortcut cmd+w or ctrl+w depending on your OS.
Also re-bind other commands that use ctrl+w to use another shortcut that you want, for example cmd+f4
You can edit keybindings.json to avoid using UI.
Shift + Alt+Right Arrow if the word is in camelCase then you will have to click Right Arrow again to select the whole camelCase. Every time you press Right Arrow again while still holding Shift + Alt down you will select a further part of the code.
so:
first the word.
then if it's part of a camelCase then the camelCase.
then if it is in a string the whole string.
... (many other posibilities)
the whole line.
everything inside the parentheses code block
the whole file
at any given time you can go back to the last selection by clicking Left Arrow instead of Right Arrow
I don't know about CTRL + w in the old Visual Studio Code but in the JetBrains IDE's this is the equivalent to CTRL + w by holding down CTRL and clicking w to select more and holding down CTRL + Shift and clicking w to unselect.
Another possibility which helps to avoid selecting only one word in camelCase is CTRL + d this will just select the whole camelCase. This will however have the side-effect of also changing the current "find" criteria.
thanks Chandan Nayak for this extra shortcut.
An unpopular opinion: you can now have Resharper keybindings, if you come from Jetbrain's camp.
The Ctrl+W expansion grow and shrinks is different from expansion selection.
On "File/Preferences/Keyboard Shortcuts" I deleted the shortcut "Ctrl + W" to close the current tab action, because for this "Ctrl+F4" works for me.
Update (14 days later): Yesterday I installed VSCode 1.34.0 - I think since then the functionality is "Ctrl + D". I was very suprised.
For any editor, you can use the below shortcuts. These shortcuts work for every text area also.
Ctrl + Shift + LeftArrow/RightArrow - this will select text word by word
Shift + UpArrow/DownArrow - this will select text line by line
Ctrl + BackSpace - this will delete text word by word
Additional
in intellijIdea
Ctrl + w - use for the select current word, after giving second Ctrl + W it will select the second word also. Like that you can select the whole line.
Ctrl + d - you can duplicate current line.
What are the keyboard shortcuts for creating multiple cursors in VS Code?
Press Alt and click. This works on Windows and Linux*, and it should work on Mac, too.
More multi-cursor features are now available in Visual Studio Code 0.2:
Multi cursor improvements
Ctrl+D (Cmd+D on Mac) selects next occurrence of word under cursor or of the current selection
Ctrl+K Ctrl+D moves last added cursor to next occurrence of word under cursor or of the current selection
The commands use matchCase by default. If the find widget is open, then the find widget settings (matchCase / matchWholeWord) will be used for determining the next occurrence
Ctrl+U (Cmd+U on Mac) undoes the last cursor action, so if you added a cursor too many or made a mistake, you can press Ctrl+U (Cmd+U on Mac) to go back to the previous cursor state.
Adding cursor up or down (Ctrl+Alt+Up / Ctrl+Alt+Down) (Cmd+Alt+Up / Cmd+Alt+Down on Mac) now reveals the last added cursor to make it easier to work with multiple cursors on more than 1 viewport height at a time (i.e. select 300 lines and only 80 fit in the viewport).
This makes it a lot easier to introduce multiple cursors
* Linux drag-window conflict:
Some distros (e.g. Ubuntu) assign window dragging to Alt+LeftMouse, which will conflict with VSCode.
So, recent versions of VSCode let you toggle between Alt+LeftMouse and Ctrl+LeftMouse under the Selection menu, as detailed in another answer.
Alternately, you could change your OS key bindings using gsettings as mentioned in another answer.
Multi-word (and multi-line) cursors/selection in VS Code
Multi-word:
Windows / OS X:
Ctrl+Shift+L / ⌘+Shift+L selects all instances of the current highlighted word
Ctrl+D / ⌘+D selects the next instance... and the one after that... etc.
Multi-line:
For multi-line selection, Ctrl+Alt+Down / ⌘+Alt+Shift+Down will extend your selection or cursor position to the next line. Ctrl+Right / ⌘+Right will move to the end of each line, no matter how long. To escape the multi-line selection, hit Esc.
See the VS Code keybindings (OS sensitive)
May 2017
As of version 1.13
Add multiple cursors with Ctrl / Cmd + Click
VSCode developers have introduced a new setting, editor.multiCursorModifier, to change the modifier key for applying multiple cursors to Cmd + Click on macOS and Ctrl + Click on Windows and Linux. 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:
ctrl/Cmd - Maps to Ctrl on Windows and Cmd on macOS.
alt - The existing default Alt.
There's also a new 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 ctrl/Cmd, multiple cursors can be added with Ctrl / Cmd + Click, and opening links or going to definition can be invoked with Alt +Click.
With fixing Issue #2106, it is now possible to also remove a cursor by using the same gesture on top of an existing selection.
I had problem with ALT key, fix is to change alt+click as a Gnome hotkey which clobbers multi-cursor select in VSCode, to super+click by running:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences mouse-button-modifier "<Super>"
Source: http://2buntu.com/articles/1529/visual-studio-code-comes-to-linux/
Try Ctrl+Alt+Shift+⬇ / ⬆, without mouse, or hold "alt" and click on all the lines you want.
Note: Tested on Windows.
Cmd+Option+Shift⬇ / ⬆ works for me on newest VSCode 1.29.1 and newest OSX High Sierra 10.13.6, Macbook Pro.
This adds a vertical line up/down on screen, like Option+Click/Vertical Drag does in Sublime Text.
To add multiple cursors at any points in your file, including multiple ones on the same line, do Cmd (or Option)+Click anywhere you want, shown in this video. You may also search for text (Cmd+F) that repeats multiple times, then press Option+Return to add cursors at end of EACH word.
On XFCE, go to Applications -> Settings -> Settings editor - > xfwm4 -> easy_click(disable value)
Now you can Insert Cursor with Alt + Click
I've also disabled L/R Workspace (ctrl + alt + L/R) settings in Settings -> Window manager -> Keyboard
As of Visual Studio Code version 0.10.9, you can now do a Create Multiple Cursors from Selected Lines by selecting multiple lines, and pressing Shift+Alt+I
Note: This is similar to Sublime Text's Ctrl+Shift+L functionality.
Source: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/vJanuary#_thank-you
Relevant PR: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/pull/1479
On Ubuntu, in order to enable multi-cursor clicking you will need to re-assign Alt+click first, by running the command below. This is because by default Ubuntu uses the shortcut itself and has it takes precedence.
> gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences mouse-button-modifier "<Super>"
There is no binding for exactly what you want.
The only thing that comes close is Ctrl+F2 which will select all of them at once.
You can bind it to Ctrl+D doing the following:
Click on File > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts
You should see a pane full of the current bindings and on the right a list of custom bindings
In the current bindings, search for Ctrl+F2 and copy that whole line and paste it into the right pane.
You might have to remove the comma at the end and then change Ctrl+F2 to Ctrl+D and then save the file.
It should look something like this:
// Place your key bindings in this file to overwrite the defaults
[
{ "key": "ctrl+d", "command": "editor.action.changeAll",
"when": "editorTextFocus" }
]
Ctrl+Alt+⬇ / ⬆ add cursors above and below the current line. Still nowhere near as good as sublime or brackets though. I can't see anything equivalent to Ctrl+D in sublime in the keyboard shortcuts file.
https://code.visualstudio.com/Updates
New version (Visual Studio 0.3.0) support more multi cursor feature.
Multi-cursor
Here's multi-cursor improvements that we've made.
⌘D selects the word at the cursor, or the next occurrence of the current selection.
⌘K ⌘D moves the last added cursor to next occurrence of the current selection.
The two actions pick up the matchCase and matchWholeWord settings of the find widget.
⌘U undoes the last cursor action, so if you added one cursor too many or made a mistake, press ⌘U to return to the previous cursor state.
Insert cursor above (⌥⌘↑) and insert cursor below (⌥⌘↓) now reveals the last added cursor, making it easier to work with multi-cursors spanning more than one screen height (i.e., working with 300 lines while only 80 fit in the screen).
And short cut of select multi cursor change into cmd + d(it's same as Sublime Text. lol)
We can expect that next version supports more convenient feature about multi cursor ;)
Alt+Click. It works in Windows.
Details: Visual Studio Code Documentation
In my XFCE (version 4.12), it's in Settings -> Window Manager Tweaks -> Accessibility.
There's a dropdown field Key used to grab and move windows:, set this to None.
Alt + Click works now in VS Code to add more cursor.
In Visual Studio without mouse: Alt+Shift+{ Arrow }.
You can do the following per the Selection menu:
Press/hold Alt+Ctrl+Up Arrow/Alt+Ctrl+Down Arrow as required to create sufficient cursors, then Ctrl+D can be used to expand the selections.
Same issue on Ubuntu-MATE, but here you resolve it by:
gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general mouse-button-modifier "<Super>"
Alt + Command + Shift will add a cursor to the next instance of what you've selected. E.g. a variable or function name
For xfce users, just go to settings>window manager tweaks>accessibility there change the key used to grab and move windows: to super as demonstrated in the image below.
Now you can use super instead of alt. Wallah!! Go make multiple cursors by alt + click.
First go to "Keyboard Shortcuts", you can get there by hitting Cmd+k then Cmd+s, or for Windows Ctrl+k then Ctrl+s.
Once you're there, search for "Add Cursor Above" and "Add Cursor Below". You can even assign them your own key-bindings.
On windows:
CTRL+Click if you are using vscode
CTRL+Alt+Click if you are using visual studio
For Ubuntu Users
ALT + SHIFT + ⬇ / ⬆
Alt + Click works in OSX. Code Version 1.14.2