How to switch between terminals in Visual Studio Code? - visual-studio-code

Question

I'm looking to switch between terminals open in visual studio code.
With this "Switch focus between editor and integrated terminal in Visual Studio Code" question I correctly setup the focus, but I would like to switch between terminals, not only from code to terminal.
Is there a way to do it?

Answer 1

Go to File → Preferences → Keyboard Shortcuts or just press Ctrl + k + Ctrl + s.
Then click the icon in upper right corner, it opens keybindings.json file:
Try adding the following two entries to this file:
{
"key": "ctrl+pagedown",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusNext",
"when": "terminalFocus"
},
{
"key": "ctrl+pageup",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusPrevious",
"when": "terminalFocus"
}
Note: On Mac change ctrl to cmd

Answer 2

As of Release 1.56.0, there is inbuilt support for switching terminals in VS Code:
New keybindings
The terminal has several new default keybindings this release:
Move to previous terminal - Ctrl+PageUp (macOS Cmd+Shift+])
Move to next terminal - Ctrl+PageDown (macOS Cmd+shift+[)
Focus terminal tabs view - Ctrl+Shift+\ (macOS Cmd+Shift+\) - Terminal tabs preview
As always, these default keybindings can be removed or custom
keybindings can be added via the keybindings system.

Answer 3

Looking deeply I found it:
{
"key": "shift+cmd+]",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusNext",
"when": "terminalFocus"
}
:)

Answer 4

alt + up/down left/right arrows to switch between splitted terminals.
If alt unfocuses your terminal and focuses the menu, add this to the settings file
// settings.json
"window.titleBarStyle": "custom",
"window.customMenuBarAltFocus": false

Answer 5

Improving on #Serhii Popov's answer
Use up and down instead of pageup and pagedown
Go to File → Preferences → Keyboard Shortcuts or just press Ctrl + k + Ctrl + s.
Then click the icon in upper right corner to open the keybindings.json file:
Then add the objects below to the array in the file:
[
...
{
"key": "ctrl+down",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusNext",
"when": "terminalFocus"
},
{
"key": "ctrl+up",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusPrevious",
"when": "terminalFocus"
}
...
]
Note: On Mac change ctrl to cmd

Answer 6

On Windows
to switch terminal ctrl + ~
to switch back to code editor ctrl + 1

Answer 7

On Windows 10 (not sure about Linux and Mac):
To switch between split terminal windows in Visual Studio Code use
Alt + Right arrow / Left arrow

Answer 8

I believe the answer you are looking for is Cmd+Shift+[ (and Cmd+Shift+])

Answer 9

Ctrl+J can toggle(show/hide) the console.

Answer 10

Here is my approach, which provides a consistent way of navigating between active terminals as well as jumping between the terminal and editor panes. You can try adding this to your keybindings.json directly but I would recommend you go through the keybinding UI (cmd+K cmd+S on a Mac) so you can review/manage conflicts etc.
With this I can use ctrl+x <arrow direction> to navigate to any visible editor or terminal. Once the cursor is in the terminal section you can use ctrl+x ctrl+up or ctrl+x ctrl+down to cycle through the active terminals (note that moving between on-screen split terminals is done with ctrl+x left or ctrl+x right).
cmd-J is still used to hide/show the terminal pane.
{
"key": "ctrl+x right",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusNextPane",
"when": "terminalFocus"
},
{
"key": "ctrl+x left",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusPreviousPane",
"when": "terminalFocus"
},
{
"key": "ctrl+x ctrl+down",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusNext",
"when": "terminalFocus"
},
{
"key": "ctrl+x ctrl+up",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusPrevious",
"when": "terminalFocus"
},
{
"key": "ctrl+x up",
"command": "workbench.action.navigateUp"
},
{
"key": "ctrl+x down",
"command": "workbench.action.navigateDown"
},
{
"key": "ctrl+x left",
"command": "workbench.action.navigateLeft",
"when": "!terminalFocus"
},
{
"key": "ctrl+x right",
"command": "workbench.action.navigateRight",
"when": "!terminalFocus"
},
This is a work in progress as I'm trying to mimic my emacs behavior in VS Code, but some key elements are missing, like being able to navigate to a terminal buffer by name (without using a mouse/dropdown). Overall I'm pretty surprised by the poor editor group/pane navigation UX in an otherwise amazing product, but working on getting used to it.

Answer 11

I've got Ctrl+PageDown/Ctrl+PageUp in my IDE Keyboard Shortcut settings, which I believe is the default as I didn't change them.
To figure out the shortcuts on your machine, go to File>Preferences>Keyboard Shortcuts and in the search box paste workbench.action.terminal.focusNext or workbench.action.terminal.focusPrevious
This would only switch between terminal groups. So if 2 terminals were in the same group (that is there were split to display side-by-side), it wouldn't switch between those. To switch between terminals in the same group, use "Alt+LeftArrow" or "Alt+RightArrow".
Credits to #Victory Ifebhor for the side-by-side case, clarified in the comments.

Answer 12

Pay attention to the the VS Code concept of Group, as that can trip you up when reading some of the answers here.
i.e there are different default shortcuts to switch between terminals in the same group (CMD+OPT+up/down) or between different terminal groups (SHIFT+CMD+[ / ])

Answer 13

You can set up an easy custom keyboard shortcut in Vs Code for this
You can Ctrl-P and type Keyboard Shortcuts
search for "Terminal: switch active terminal"
set any key combination you want, mine is Ctrl+K since it wasn't used
Now you can switch to focus on the sidebar terminal without using your mouse but if you just want to switch to the main terminal Ctrl+J

Answer 14

I have been trying to find the same shortcut, I found with VS code what helps is to know how the different UI components and actions are called.
In this case once "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab (where you can view and customize shortcuts) is open search for "prev terminal group" or "next terminal group".
We can see that VS Code has default shortcuts for:
Terminal: Focus Previous Terminal Group
Terminal: Focus Previous Terminal in Terminal Group
See results for my search:
I am not sure which one you are the most interested in but, try each and once you found the shortcut you were looking for: use it or customize it to your likings.
Hope that helps 🙏

Answer 15

In current version of VSCode it is available like this. You can search this command in the Keyboard Shortcuts
workbench.action.terminal.focusNext
workbench.action.terminal.focusPrevious

Answer 16

If anyone else is so used to switching between tabs with ⌘+[0-9] this mapping in your keybindings.json might useful:
{
"key": "cmd+1",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusAtIndex1",
"when": "terminalFocus"
},
{
"key": "cmd+2",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusAtIndex2",
"when": "terminalFocus"
},
{
"key": "cmd+3",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusAtIndex3",
"when": "terminalFocus"
},
You can also extend the conditional in case you're using the terminal editor (to avoid switching when focused).
{
"key": "cmd+1",
"command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusAtIndex1",
"when": "terminalFocus && !terminalEditorFocus"
},