VS Code keyboard shortcuts for Mac

VS Code's line commands work on the current line when nothing is selected, which is what makes them worth learning: ⌘X with an empty selection cuts the whole line rather than nothing at all. That one behaviour removes most of the selecting people do before they edit.

The chords marked with two parts, such as ⌘K ⌘C, are chords in the musical sense — press the first pair, release, then press the second. VS Code shows a pending-chord indicator in the status bar while it waits for the second half, so a chord that appears to do nothing usually means the second press missed.

Multi-cursor editing is the single largest difference between someone who is fast in VS Code and someone who is not, and it starts with one chord. ⌘D selects the word under the cursor, and each further press adds the next occurrence to the selection — so a rename becomes typing the new name once with six cursors down the file.

⌘K ⌘D is the escape hatch for the occurrence you did not want: it moves the last selection on to the next match instead of adding to it. ⌘U undoes the most recent cursor operation without undoing the edit, which is what you want when one press of ⌘D went one match too far.

Quick Open and the Command Palette are the same widget wearing two hats, which is why ⌘P and ⇧⌘P feel identical. ⌘P searches file names; typing a > into it turns it into the Command Palette, and ⇧⌘P simply starts you there.

The two history chords are the ones people miss. ⌃- steps back to where you were before the last jump to a definition, and ⌃⇧- steps forward again — the browser back button for code, and the reason you can chase a call chain four files deep and still find your way home.

There are two search surfaces in VS Code and they take different chords: ⌘F searches the file you are in, ⇧⌘F searches every file in the workspace. The three toggle chords — case, whole word, regular expression — work in both, and they are worth learning because clicking those small buttons in the find widget is fiddly at any window size.

Search Editor is the third surface and the least known. ⌘Enter from the search view opens the results as an editable document you can scroll, annotate and keep, rather than a panel that vanishes the moment you search for something else.

These are the chords that make an editor an IDE. ⌘. is the most valuable of them: it opens the Quick Fix menu for whatever the cursor is sitting on, which is where imports get added, protocols get stubbed and lint rules get silenced, all without reaching for the mouse.

F12 jumps to a definition and ⌥F12 peeks at it inline instead — the difference matters when you want to read a function signature without losing your place. ⌘K F12 splits the difference by opening the definition beside your current file.

VS Code arranges editors into groups rather than plain tabs, and the numbered chords focus a group rather than a document. ⌘1 through ⌘3 move between the first three, which covers almost every split anyone actually works in.

⇧⌘T is the chord to remember after a mis-click: it reopens the editor you just closed, as many times as you need to walk back. ⌘K Z drops into Zen Mode for a screenshot or a demo, and two presses of Escape leave it again.

The terminal has its own keyboard universe, and the first thing to know is that ⌘\ splits the terminal when the terminal has focus and splits the editor when the editor does. Same chord, different pane, decided entirely by where the cursor is.

The two command-navigation chords depend on shell integration being active. When it is, ⌘↑ and ⌘↓ jump between the commands you have run rather than scrolling by line — which is how you find the output of the build from four commands ago without dragging a scrollbar.

Debugging is the one group built on function keys, which is a problem on a Mac laptop: unless you have turned on the option to use F1, F2 and so on as standard function keys, F5 needs an fn press to reach VS Code at all. Turning that setting on is the single change that makes this table usable.

F5 does double duty — it starts a session and continues a paused one — while ⌃F5 runs without attaching the debugger at all. ⇧F5 stops and ⇧⌘F5 restarts, which is the pair you will wear out.

A shortcut pressed in VS Code is invisible to whoever is watching. The Command Palette opens, six cursors appear, the terminal splits — and the audience sees the result with no idea what caused it. In a recorded tutorial or a pairing session that gap is the whole problem, and narrating every chord out loud only works if your voice keeps perfect pace with your hands, which it does not once you are typing quickly.

Show KeyPress is a paid macOS menu bar app, for macOS 14 Sonoma or later, that closes the gap by drawing each key you press as a keycap on top of everything else on screen. It has no VS Code integration, no extension to install and no video recording of its own — it is a window drawn above your other windows, which is exactly why any recorder or conferencing tool capturing a display picks it up.