There are already several questions about "how do I switch back and forth between code and the terminal in VS Code", and the (correct) answer to all of them is:
ctrl + `
But there's a problem with that answer. I very often switch to the terminal and hit up + ENTER to run the previous command. However, when I do so too quickly, VS Code focuses me not on the terminal, but on the terminal-switching-dropdown in the upper right corner.
As a result, I wind up changing terminals (because the up + ENTER goes into the dropdown and not the terminal itself) ... when I just want to focus the existing terminal and type there.
Is there any way to make VS code not focus on that dropdown? Or even just to remove it entirely?
It turned out the problem wasn't the up key, it was the SHIFT key. In VS Code CTRL + tilde sends you to the terminal, but CTRL + SHIFT + ` instead opens a new terminal session.
(As a side note, I could use the "code" tag to express that second tilde, but Stack Overflow botches both tildes and the "code" tag when I try to format just "CTRL + tilde".)
The shift key on my keyboard sticks sometimes, and it was making this happen without me realizing it (and I mistakenly attributed it to the up key since I press both together).
Thanks to everyone who helped me narrow the problem down in the comments!
In Neatbeans, unindent works as expected when multiple lines are selected. But consider the following, where the pipe character | symbolizes the cursor position in the editor:
(a) Cursor at start of line (no selection)
|hello world!
(b) Cursor inside of line (no selection)
hell|o world!
In Netbeans, when I hit Shift+Tab on version (a) then the indentation is removed. This is what I expect.
However, when I hit Shift+Tab on version (b) then nothing happens. This is different from the code editors that I am used to. I would expect the indentation to be removed, or that the cursor moves to the start of the line, such that the next Shift+Tab will remove the indentation.
Is there a config in Netbeans that makes unindent via Shift+Tab work when the cursor is inside the line?
To shift the line to the left, regardless of the cursor position you can use the "Shift line left" editor action. In the default NetBeans mapping this is assigned to Alt+Shift+KP_LEFT and Alt+Shift-LEFT
Just open the keymap options page and search for the action "shift line"
It's not exactly what you are asking, but you could try to remap that action to "Shift-Tab" and see if it works.
TLDR: There seems to be a bug in the way NetBeans handles indenting/unindenting.
I would expect the indentation to be removed
I don't see any formal documentation on how unindenting is supposed to work in NetBeans, but it appears to move the text to the right of the cursor to the left, as long as there is only whitespace to the left of the cursor. While that is different to how unindenting works in other code editors such as Intellij IDEA and Eclipse, where the entire line is shifted to the left even when the cursor is poitioned within the text, it's not necessarily incorrect.
If you want to unindent in NetBeans there are two simple alternatives: either position the cursor at the start of the line, or select some text - anything at all! - on that line before unindenting.
Some comments in the NetBeans Bug Report Bug 212353 - Shift+Tab (Delete tab) shortcut does not work in editor may be relevant:
Please note that those actions should be inverse - I mean when you
select a block and you hit <TAB> <TAB> <Shift-TAB> <Shift-TAB> you
should always end up with the same text. The same should be true if
you change the order to <Shift-TAB> <Shift-TAB> <TAB> <TAB> you
should end up with the same text.
That said, NetBeans is not adhering to that standard. Using your second example, pressing <TAB><TAB> works fine, but subsequently pressing <SHIFT><TAB> does nothing, so it is not possible to "end up with the same text". That looks like a bug (in Apache NetBeans 11.2 at least). You can raise a bug report here.
It's also worth noting that <Shift> + <Tab> is actually defined as the keymap for "Delete TAB" rather "unindenting".
Is there a config in Netbeans that makes unindent via Shift+Tab work
when the cursor is inside the line?
I don't think so. All you can do, using Tools > Options > Keymap, is to change the shortcut keys from <Shift> + <Tab> to something else, but that won't change the behavior.
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
I've rebound my caps lock key to be an additional ctrl key, but in emacs using the rebound key generates the C-S key combination. Pressing caps-p generates the sequence C-S-p, whereas using the the ctrl key to do the same generates C-p.
This results in some weird behaviour, such as C-n and C-p setting a mark and then highlighting the region that I go through.
I have not changed the definition of the caps key in X, instead using the setting built into my window manager (Cinnamon). Could this be what is causing the problem, or is this the intended behaviour of this key?
This question is probably relevant, basically just use xmodmap to set the keys directly. It worked for me when I had caps lock set to control and I think I was using gnome3 classic (which Cinammon is based on) at the time.
On a related note I'd also recommend having a look at space2ctrl, I found that reaching for caps lock all the time still hurt my fingers.
I'm running CrunchBang 10 "Statler" (derived from Debian 6 "Squeeze") on an Asus laptop
(yeah, I'm a little behind right now)
I've currently got GNU Emacs 23.2.1. It didn't even recognize the Caps Lock key as a keypress until I re-mapped it to Ctrl using xmodmap.
So first I created file ~/.Xmodmap:
! attempting to redefine the <Caps Lock> key to do <Ctrl>
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
add Control = Caps_Lock
Apparently Debian uses .xsession, vs..xinitrc.
file .xsession is where the window manager (Openbox) gets started with exec
I inserted the xmodmap call before the exec:
#!/bin/sh
# gonna modify the keys so <Caps Lock> is <Ctrl>
xmodmap /home/tom/.Xmodmap
exec openbox-session
The Caps Lock key seems to be working just like the Ctrl key
within Emacs now.
I also faced this problem before, my keyboard has problem with CTRL key. Maybe you have the same problem.
I am using emacs in Ubuntu. How can I remap META to the ALT key?
If you run emacs in a gnome-terminal, the gnome-terminal may be capturing your alt key to open the gui menu (File, Edit, ...). You can change this behavior by selecting Edit >> Keyboard Shortcuts ..., and unchecking `Enable menu access keys ...'.
On my system, Ubuntu 9.04, this lets alt serve as meta for emacs.
Usually Meta is mapped to the Alt key by default.
What is displayed in the echo area at the bottom of the Emacs window when you type Alt+X? If you see M-x then Alt is working as Meta.
Way back when, it did seem that the META key was difficult to map to the ALT. At that time I had to use xmodmap, and these were the things I had to put in my .xmodmap file. Some variation of the following always worked (it depended on the system). My .xinitrc file would have xmodmap read in the file.
!! Note the `!` are comment characters.
!! suggested to make Emacs work under VNC
keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
!! xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L' -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R'
!!
!! some environments still can't handle alt key properly
!! add this:
!!
clear Mod1
add Mod1 = Meta_L Meta_R
!! or
!! xmodmap -e "clear Mod1" -e "add Mod1 = Meta_L Meta_R"
Use xkeycaps to look at your keyboard mapping and swap the META and ALT modifiers, or just swap the entire keys. Because GNOME has some assumptions about which keys have META and ALT modifiers, it'll probably make your life easier to swap the keys entirely.
xkeycaps should be available as an ubuntu package.
If using a Mac, open up terminal then navigate to Terminal > Preferences. Under the profiles tab, check the checkbox on Use Option as Meta Key. See screenshot
That should do the trick.