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Get Faster - VSCode navigation without a mouse

Vaidotas Piekus on May 26, 2020

Motivation Why should you care about mouseless experience when VSCode is a GUI editor tuned to a great mouse experience? The answer is s...

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Zigmas Slušnys • May 26 '20

I got used to navigating methods with shift+cmd+.
It opens all the methods within classes in file and let's you search. Most valuable thing for me honestly.

Andrea Barghigiani • May 27 '20

This is nice too, thanks for sharing!

Mikk Mangus • Jun 1 '20

I have my previous and forward set up the same way as in the browser which is super convenient and I could not do without it.

{
  "key": "cmd+[",
  "command": "workbench.action.navigateBack"
},
{
  "key": "cmd+]",
  "command": "workbench.action.navigateForward"
}

Igor Melo • Feb 18 '22

Isn't ctrl tab easier?
Or they are different stuff

Mikk Mangus • Feb 18 '22

The actions navigateBack and navigateForward are not about navigating between tabs, but within the code. I.e, if you open a file/function by Ctrl+clicking on it, you can "navigate back" :)

Igor Melo • Mar 2 '22

Oh, I see!
Its kinda of a cursor position history...
Very useful!

Waylon Walker • Jul 2 '20 • Edited

In my first ever dev post I posted my tips on getting around vscode without the mouse.

My favorites that were a bit hard to find at the time were getting in and out of the embedded terminal, and cycleing through terminal tabs and code tabs with the same hotkey.

I use these several times per minute all day. I'm constantly going to the terminal and back to the code.

These were all custom maps. Let me know what you think.

Keyboard Driven VSCode

Waylon Walker ・ Nov 19 '19 ・ 4 min read

#vscode

Bjarne Magnussen • May 27 '20

Coding in Golang and clicking "go to definition" a lot, for me the best shortcut is simply the "navigate back": stackoverflow.com/questions/354243...

David De Wulf • May 26 '20

Good tips! Thanks for sharing.
Do you know you can just hit the space bar to open your file instead of use CMD+Down_Arrow.?

Olgun S. • Aug 4 '22 • Edited

Hi. I just look for how to create new file and new folder without mouse and without go to terminal. When we do ctrl+shift+N in Windows, we are ready to change the cursor file name in the new folder and press enter to create the folder. I want to create a file or folder in the same way. But there is no such thing in VSC for some reason. Don't you think this is a useful and important thing?

I am Budi • May 26 '20

A video demonstrating this would be awesome. Thanks.

Andrea Barghigiani • May 27 '20

+1 for the CMD+SHIFT+O shortcut, I was using the outline in sidebar so find this really useful 🎉

Alan Solitar • May 26 '20

Nice article -- this is also a good thing for people who have RSI flare ups when using a mouse.

Muhammad Kasim • May 27 '20

“Shortcuts are good” by Muhammad Kasim medium.com/@muhammadkasim/shortcut...

Waylon Walker • Jul 2 '20

Thanks for the tips getting in the activity bar and out, as well as getting to the file explorer. I did not know of those and usually use a clunky control pallets command to get there.