At its heart, Visual Studio Code is a code editor. Like many other code editors, VS Code adopts a common user interface and layout of an explorer on the left, showing all of the files and folders you have access to, and an editor on the right, showing the content of the files you have opened. Show
Basic LayoutVS Code comes with a simple and intuitive layout that maximizes the space provided for the editor while leaving ample room to browse and access the full context of your folder or project. The UI is divided into five areas:
Each time you start VS Code, it opens up in the same state it was in when you last closed it. The folder, layout, and opened files are preserved. Open files in each editor are displayed with tabbed headers (Tabs) at the top of the editor region. To learn more about tabbed headers, see the Tabs section below.
Side by side editingYou can open as many editors as you like side by side vertically and horizontally. If you already have one editor open, there are multiple ways of opening another editor to the side of the existing one:
Whenever you open another file, the editor that is active will display the content of that file. So if you have two editors side by side and you want to open file 'foo.cs' into the right-hand editor, make sure that editor is active (by clicking inside it) before opening file 'foo.cs'. By default editors will open to the right-hand side of the active one. You can change this behavior through the setting When you have more than one editor open you can switch between them quickly by holding the Ctrl (macOS: Cmd) key and pressing 1, 2, or 3.
MinimapA Minimap (code outline) gives you a high-level overview of your source code, which is useful for quick navigation and code understanding. A file's minimap is shown on the right side of the editor. You can click or drag the shaded area to quickly jump to different sections of your file.
Indent GuidesThe image above also shows indentation guides (vertical lines) which help you quickly see matching indent levels. If you would like to disable indent guides, you can set The editor has a navigation bar above its contents called Breadcrumbs. It shows the current location and allows you to quickly navigate between folders, files, and symbols. Breadcrumbs always show the file path and if the current file type has language support for symbols, the symbol path up to the cursor position. You can disable breadcrumbs with the View > Show Breadcrumbs toggle command. For more information about the breadcrumbs feature, such as how to customize their appearance, see the Breadcrumbs section of the Code Navigation article. ExplorerThe Explorer is used to browse, open, and manage all of the files and folders in your project. VS Code is file and folder based - you can get started immediately by opening a file or folder in VS Code. After opening a folder in VS Code, the contents of the folder are shown in the Explorer. You can do many things from here:
VS Code works very well with other tools that you might use, especially command-line tools. If you want to run a command-line tool in the context of the folder you currently have open in VS Code, right-click the folder and select Open in Command Prompt (or Open in Terminal on macOS or Linux). You can also navigate to the location of a file or folder in the native Explorer by right-clicking on a file or folder and selecting Reveal in Explorer (or Reveal in Finder on macOS or Open Containing Folder on Linux).
By default, VS Code excludes some folders from the Explorer (for example.
Multi-selectionYou can select multiple files in the File
Explorer and OPEN EDITORS view to run actions (Delete, Drag and Drop, Open to the Side) on multiple items. Use the Note: In earlier VS Code releases, clicking with the
Advanced tree navigationYou can filter the currently visible files in the File Explorer. With the focus on the File Explorer, press Ctrl/Cmd+F to open the tree Find control and type part of the file name you want to match. You will see a Find control in the top-right of the File Explorer showing what you have typed and matching file names will be highlighted. Pressing the Filter button will toggle between the two modes: highlighting and filtering. Pressing DownArrow will let you focus the first matched element and jump between matching elements. This navigation feature is available for all tree views in VS Code, so feel free to try it out in other areas of the product. Outline viewThe Outline view is a separate section in the bottom of the File Explorer. When expanded, it will show the symbol tree of the currently active editor. The Outline view has different Sort By modes, optional cursor tracking, and supports the usual open gestures. It also includes an input box which finds or filters symbols as you type. Errors and warnings are also shown in the Outline view, letting you see at a glance a problem's location. For symbols, the view relies on information computed by your installed extensions for different file types. For example, the built-in Markdown support returns the Markdown header hierarchy for a Markdown file's symbols. There are several Outline view settings which allow you to enable/disable icons and control the errors and warnings display (all enabled by default):
Open EditorsAt the top of the Explorer is a view labeled OPEN EDITORS. This is a list of active files or previews. These are files you previously opened in VS Code that you were working on. For example, a file will be listed in the OPEN EDITORS view if you:
Just click an item in the OPEN EDITORS view, and it becomes active in VS Code. Once you are done with your task, you can remove files individually from the OPEN EDITORS view, or you can remove all files by using the View: Close All Editors or View: Close All Editors in Group actions. ViewsThe File Explorer is just one of the Views available in VS Code. There are also Views for:
You can show or hide views from within the main view and also reorder them by drag and drop. Activity BarThe Activity Bar on the left lets you quickly switch between Views. You can also reorder Views by dragging and dropping them on the Activity Bar or remove a View entirely (right click Hide from Activity Bar). Command PaletteVS Code is equally accessible from the keyboard. The most important key combination to know is ⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P), which brings up the Command Palette. From here, you have access to all of the functionality of VS Code, including keyboard shortcuts for the most common operations. The Command Palette provides access to many commands. You can execute editor commands, open files, search for symbols, and see a quick outline of a file, all using the same interactive window. Here are a few tips:
Type Configuring the editorVS Code gives you many options to configure the editor. From the View menu, you can hide or toggle various parts of the user interface, such as the Side Bar, Status Bar, and Activity Bar. You can hide the Menu Bar on Windows and Linux by changing the setting You can also hide the Menu Bar on Windows and Linux with the View > Toggle Menu Bar command. This command sets SettingsMost editor configurations are kept in settings which can be modified directly. You can set options globally through user settings or per project/folder through workspace settings. Settings values are kept in a
You will see the VS Code Default Settings in the left window and your editable After editing your settings, type ⌘S (Windows, Linux Ctrl+S) to save your changes. The changes will take effect immediately.
Zen ModeZen Mode lets you focus on your code by hiding all UI except the editor (no Activity Bar, Status Bar, Side Bar and Panel), going to full screen and centering the editor layout. Zen mode can be toggled using
View menu, Command Palette or by the shortcut ⌘K Z (Windows, Linux Ctrl+K Z). Double Esc exits Zen Mode. The transition to full screen can be disabled via Centered editor layoutCentered editor layout allows you to center align the editor area. This is particularly useful when working with a single editor on a large monitor. You can use the sashes on the side to resize the view (hold down the TabsVisual Studio Code shows open items with Tabs (tabbed headings) in the title area above the editor. When you open a file, a new Tab is added for that file. Tabs let you quickly navigate between items and you can Drag and Drop Tabs to reorder them. When you have more open items than can fit in the title area, you can use the Show Opened Editors command (available through the If you don't want to use Tabs, you can disable the feature by setting the
See the section below to optimize VS Code when working without Tabs. Tab orderingBy
default, new Tabs are added to the right of the existing Tabs but you can control where you'd like new Tabs to appear with the For example, you might like new tabbed items to appear on the left:
Preview modeWhen you single-click or select a file in the Explorer, it is shown in a preview mode and reuses an existing Tab. This is useful if you are quickly browsing files and don't want every visited file to have its own Tab. When you start editing the file or use double-click to open the file from the Explorer, a new Tab is dedicated to that file. Preview mode is indicated by italics in the Tab heading: If you'd prefer to not use preview mode and always create a new Tab, you can control the behavior with these settings:
Editor GroupsWhen you split an editor (using the Split Editor or Open to the Side commands), a new editor region is created which can hold a group of items. You can open as many editor regions as you like side by side vertically and horizontally. You can see these clearly in the OPEN EDITORS section at the top of the Explorer view: You can Drag and Drop editor groups on the workbench, move individual Tabs between groups and quickly close entire groups (Close All).
Grid editor layoutBy default, editor groups are laid out in vertical columns (for example when you split an editor to open it to the side). You can easily arrange editor groups in any layout you like, both vertically and horizontally: To support flexible layouts, you can create empty editor groups. By default, closing the last editor of an editor group will also close the group itself, but you can change this behavior with the new setting There are a predefined set of editor layouts in the new View > Editor Layout menu: Editors that open to the side (for example by clicking the editor toolbar Split Editor action) will by default open to the right-hand side of the active editor. If you prefer to open editors below the active one,
configure the new setting There are many keyboard commands for adjusting the editor layout with the keyboard alone, but if you prefer to use the mouse, drag and drop is a fast way to split the editor into any direction:
Keyboard shortcutsHere are some handy keyboard shortcuts to quickly navigate between editors and editor groups.
Working without TabsIf you prefer not to use Tabs (tabbed headings), you can disable Tabs (tabbed headings) entirely by
setting Disable Preview modeWithout Tabs, the OPEN EDITORS section of the File Explorer is a quick way to do file navigation. With preview editor mode, files are not added to the OPEN EDITOR list nor editor group on single-click open. You can disable this
feature through the Ctrl+Tab to navigate in entire editor historyYou can change keybindings for Ctrl+Tab to show you a list of all opened editors from the history independent from the active editor group. Edit your keybindings and add the following:
Close an entire group instead of a single editorIf you liked the behavior of VS Code closing an entire group when closing one editor, you can bind the following in your keybindings. macOS:
Windows/Linux:
Window managementVS Code has some options to control how windows (instances) should be opened or restored between sessions. The settings If configured to be Note: There can still be cases where this setting is ignored (for example, when using the The Next stepsNow that you know the overall layout of VS Code, start to customize the editor to how you like to work by looking at the following topics:
Common questionsHow can I change the color of the indent guides?The
indent guide colors are customizable as are most VS Code UI elements. To customize the indent guides color for your active color theme, use the For example, to make the indent guides bright blue, add the following to your
Can I hide the OPEN EDITORS section in the Explorer?Yes, you can hide the OPEN EDITORS list with the 11/2/2022 |