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Productivity Tips

In this Visual Studio Code tutorial, we describe Visual Studio Code features that help increase your coding productivity. Learning just a few tips can speed up your workflow and help you discover the full power of the VS Code editor.

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  • Find features and keyboard shortcuts in the Command Palette
    • View > Command Palette... (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P))
  • Quick Open recent files or search by filename
    • ⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+P) to show the Quick Open dropdown
  • Go to Line in a file
    • type filename:line number
  • Go to Symbol in a file
    • type filename@symbol name
  • View Quick Open options
    • type ?
  • Quick Open multiple files
    • press Right Arrow to open the selected file but leave the dropdown available
  • Multi-cursor selection
    • Alt+Click on Windows and Linux, Option+Click on macOS to add a new cursor
    • ⌥⌘↑ (Windows Ctrl+Alt+Up, Linux Shift+Alt+Up) ⌥⌘↓ (Windows Ctrl+Alt+Down, Linux Shift+Alt+Down) to add a new cursor above or below the current position
    • ⇧⌘L (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+L) to add cursors to all matches of the current selection
  • Auto Save changes
    • File > Auto Save
  • Open the Settings editor
    • File > Preferences > Settings (⌘, (Windows, Linux Ctrl+,))
  • Set Format On Type
    • check Editor: Format on Type
  • Set Format On Paste
    • check Editor: Format on Paste
  • IntelliSense smart code completions
    • trigger IntelliSense with ⌃Space (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Space)

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