Mastering Hotkeys in Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is an incredibly powerful and versatile code editor, but mastering its hotkeys can take time and practice. In this article, we'll explore the various options available for customizing your theme, exploring plugins, and learning shortcuts to make your coding experience more efficient.

Customizing Your Theme

To customize your theme in Visual Studio Code, you can go to the Project view settings and select any or all of these options. From there, you'll be able to preview the available themes all in one go. You can also select View | Quick Switch Scheme from the main menu or press Control+` and select Theme.

Exploring Plugins

To explore plugins for Visual Studio Code, go to Settings | Plugins and search for theme in the Marketplace tab. Here, you'll find a variety of custom options to choose from. PhpStorm comes with only a few predefined themes, but there's a wealth of custom options available.

Learning Shortcuts

One of the key differences between Visual Studio Code and other code editors is that you don't need to install extensions to make it powerful. Use the Visual Studio Code shortcut cheat sheet – you can download the default Visual Studio Code keymap reference and print it out as a card.

When you use the mouse on a button inside the IDE, Key Promoter X shows you the shortcut you could have used instead. Install Key Promoter X – this extension helps you learn essential shortcuts while working. You can also use it to find any file, action, class, or symbol, and see all the matches in one place.

Memorizing Shortcuts

To learn Visual Studio Code shortcuts faster, memorize its most universal shortcut – double Shift or Search Everywhere. Learning these shortcuts will come in handy even if you decide to switch to another code editor later on – the shortcuts are the same in almost all of them.

Once you've installed the keymap, you can go to Settings | Keymap and set it as the default one. You can also set VS Code as your default keymap by going to Preferences / Settings | Plugins and looking for VS Code there.

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