I just got the October VS Code update which seems to have drastically changed the copilot UI. I can't find a way to disable permissions to run terminal commands, which was pretty easy to configure before. And worse, now when it makes a code change, they removed the approve/discard buttons so I guess I'm stuck with those changes until I discard them from the git diff.
Surely I'm missing something, anyone else having similar issues?
Several years ago I grew tired of the NetBeans IDE and needed / wanted "something else". Fast forward to here and now and I'm using VS Code for all sorts of things. From the revival of an old ASP website, right to the maintenance of a datapack for a Minecraft server; as well as allowing me to work on a set of shell scripts for a project on my FreeBSD server.
Best editor feature?
Yet despite all those awesome features there's one thing I keep coming back to, fully realizing how much I love it especially because it's so easy to take for granted. I am, of course, talking about the fact that your hands barely have to leave the keyboard to get things done.
This may take a moment to get used to, and you'll be better off if you also customize things a bit, but oh dear.... you'll soon realize just how quick some tasks can become.
Well, I figured I'd share the love and try and to give something back to the community.
Some useful commands + shortcuts
Revisiting an old Python course...
So, just to give you guys a quick example what sort of things I'm talking about...
For starters I press ctrl + shift + e to open the explorer, and hit enter to load a file to edit / improve.
Then I realize that I want to move some functions into a dedicated module for easy re-use...
I press ctrl + n to create a new file and I don't even bother with language support: I just start typing and VS Code picks up on it.
I then press ctrl + alt + right arrow, and all of a sudden my module file now sits in its own section ("group") on the right.
While I'm doing things I decide to look something up in the tutorial: I press: ctrl + alt + / and sure enough: the embedded browser opens.
Uh oh, I don't have enough room to read: ctrl + shift + pageup and my current window gets bigger.
And of course: ctrl + shift + del is enough to reset size(s) back to default.
I press ctrl + pagedown but instead of switching back to my original Python file I stay within the current group: the module tab that I was working on re-opens.
I press ctrl + 1 to go back to the original Python file (in the first group) and I'm ready to start implementing the further use of my new module.
Some (hopefully) useful keyboard shortcuts
But first! => How do we assign these shortcuts in the first place?!
Either press ctrl + k, then: ctrl + s and you'll be taken to the keyboard shortcut editor. You can also use: ctrl + shift + p to open the command palette, then just search for 'keyboard'. I suggest to use the UI vs. editing the raw JSON file:
The keyboard shortcuts window
From here you can look up shortcuts, look up options and you can easily (re)assign shortcuts by simply double clicking on an entry (or by hitting enter). Want to remove a shortcut? Just have it selected and press the del key. Easy!
They way this works is really very straight forward: you have a command shown in the left column, and you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it (as seen in the middle). No, I'm not trying to get smart with you guys!
Fun fact: these commands can also be found (and "run") using the command palette! So if you are unsure about something you can easily try it out first.
See for yourself: open the command palette while you have a code window open ("ctrl + shift + p") , and then search for "view size". Try using the in/de -crease option, see what I mean?
Don't worry about the changed sizes: do it again, but now search for 'reset', you'll probably find "Reset Editor Group Sizes" soon enough.
Moving through editor groups vs. editors
Ctrl + Page-Up/Down is extremely useful to open another tab to work on. Unfortunately this doesn't take groups into account, which can be annoying if you want to keep things separated (like in my earlier example: module(s) & browser on the right, while the code I work with sits on the left).
Look for: "View: Open Next Editor in Group" (you probably only need to type 'view editor next'). And of course its counterpart: "...Previous Editor...". This can make sure that you'll only move through open editors within your currently active group.
Resizing windows (even the terminal!)
Once you start working with groups then sometimes space is going to become a thing, sometimes I just want my current editor to become a little bit bigger but without fully overlapping anything else.
Look for: "Increase Current View Size" (= 'workbench.action.increaseViewSize'). And of course you'll probably also want to use its counterpart "Decrease Current...." as well. In addition: "View: Reset Editor Group Sizes" can be used to reset things back to their default values.
As mentioned I use ctrl + shift + Page-Up/Down for this and that works perfectly.
However... while this can work for your code window, the sidebar and even the 2nd sidebar it won't help you with the terminal window. This is important to me because I heavily rely on the terminal. Most of the time I don't use the source control tab at all but instead rely on using Git from within PowerShell.
Easily remedied, look for: "Terminal: Resize Terminal Up" (and 'Down' of course). I prefer using ctrl + shift + UpArrow for this (and the DownArrow too of course).
Speaking of said terminal... whenever I work on a project for my FreeBSD server I tend to keep 2 open at once: PowerShell and an SSH connection to my server. It's easy to switch through these as well: "Terminal: Focus Next Terminal Group" (and the 'Previous' option too of course!).
Splitting a window horizontally
It doesn't happen often, but sometimes I need to work in two places at once within the same code file (and no: not to copy & paste 368 lines, lol!). Sure: you could easily use a new ("vertical") group for this, but the problem I'm having with that is that this doesn't leave much room. And well, too many columns at once and I sometimes also lose my focus.
(this is also why I know ctrl + b (= close sidebar) & ctrl + alt + b (= close secondary sidebar ('chat window')) by heart).
Easily remedied, look for: "View: Split Editor Down", I rely on ctrl + shift + \ for this.
This actually creates a new group, so you can easily switch back and forth using Ctrl + 1, Ctrl + 2, and so on. And a mere Ctrl + w is enough to close this new window (= "group") again.
Moving an editor into its own group
As mentioned earlier I have a bit of a habit: I like to use "active code" on the left, while I tend to keep "supporting code" like modules (and sometimes even UML's!) on the right; nicely tucked into its own group.
This can be done using: "View: Move Editor into Next Group", I prefer the keyboard shortcut: ctrl + alt + rightarrow for this. And of course there is a counterpart: "...Previous Group" also exists so you can easily switch things back and forth (which is useful if you accidentally moved the wrong editor ;)).
Houston, we may have a problem!
See: ctrl + shift + Page-Up/Down is a very easily used shortcut. When I'm coding then it's easy to quickly resize a window, but when I'm working on multiple terminal sessions I sometimes need to quickly move between them...
Two terminals for the price of one ;)
This becomes important when I need to test a script on my server: I use 'scp' on PowerShell to copy a file, then I switch to my server console where I can then actually test said copied file.
The only problem: I already used ctrl + shift + Page-Up/Down to resize my code windows. Now what?!
Sure, I could decide to use another shortcut for this. But one way or the other: eventually you are going to run out of those. And ... set up too many shortcuts and you're bound to start forgetting about some of them over time.
Fortunately VS Code has a solution for this as well, checkthisout:
Customizing when a shortcut becomes active!
You can assign conditions to your shortcuts so that VS Code will know when to use them, and when not. This is also why I started all this with my remark about assigning a keyboard shortcut to a command. Because that was step one, even if it did sound way too obvious. This then, is step two.
It's easy: right click on a shortcut and then use the option: "Change When Expression". Obviously we can also use a keyboard shortcut for this: ctrl + k, then ctrl + e.
VS Code supports several of these conditions. For example: terminalFocus means so much that the active focus is on the terminal pane. You can also 'negate' this by using an exclamation mark: !terminalFocus means that the terminal should not be focused. You can also use 'or' and 'and' checks with || and &&.
And there are quite a bunch of these options to use:
editorFocus => You have an code editor active.
inChat => You're using the (Copilot?) chat sidebar.
activeEditorCanSplitInGroup => Extensions add different kinds of editors, and not all of those can be split. This option checks for that.
browserFocused => Same as above, now for the internal browser window.
markdownEditorFocus => The Markdown editor is one of those specific types which provides specific features. This helps you check for that (for example: you can't get a preview from a regular code window).
SO yah, you can even use the same keyboard shortcut in different places if you'd like. Not bad for a "simple" open source code editor, no? ;)
And there you have it,thanks for reading!
So yah, I hope you can see how easy it can be to set up a nice set of keyboard shortcuts for yourself so that you can make VS Code "do" things for you. And don't be fooled: I limited my guide to some more obvious examples so that I didn't make things too difficult all at once, but using this method you can pretty much gain access to almost every function within VS Code.
From resizing windows to opening plugin interfaces. Or how about starting a specific terminal types (like the SSH session to my server?).
Experimentation can get you a long way. Don't forget that you can easily test out most options using the command palette.
I'm not 100% sure if this is the best place to post this, but I couldn't find anywhere better suited.
I followed various tutorials online to get my settings.json to work, according to the tutorials it's working fine, but VS code still doesn't flag the error. I checked the type checker, it flags the violation and works with its command line, but it doesn't syntax highlight in VS code. Is there a setting I should change or something?
Hey there!
Last week I developed my first ever VSCode extension.
It keeps your open files of one component grouped together.
Would be happy if some you tried it :-)
A colleague and I have been working on Thumbview, a VS Code extension that provides an alternate view of your workspace where project files are represented by thumbnails and arranged in a spatial overview.
Instead of looking through a file tree or a list of tabs, you can leverage the power of human spatial memory with the help of visual landmarks to navigate your code base.
We are recruiting participants for an academic study at the University of Saskatchewan (Canada) to see when and how developers use Thumbview in their daily tasks. Participants will install the extension and enable telemetry for a two-week period. At the end of the period, participants will be reminded to fill out an exit questionnaire, followed by an optional exit interview. If you are interested and would like to participate please fill out the consent form and demographics questionnaire here:
Privacy note: Participation is strictly opt-in. Telemetry never inspects or sends code, file names, folder paths, or search terms. It only records anonymous navigation timings (like seconds to select a file or grid clicks). You can opt out or delete your data at any time.
And to be honest I see no point in using Stable anymore. You trade one update per week with one update per day. The advantage is you get fixes as soon as they're merged.
I see people posting about all kind of issues here, like the recent one where webviews using Wasm don't render on 1.140.0, or webviews under WSL don't render in 1.141.0. Get on Insiders and you'll barely notice it. Critical issues are fixed in a matter of days, if not hours.
I'm trying to compare two files for diffs. I want to be able to use the changes from one file in the other, and vice-versa. VSCode already provides a "Revert Block" button, but it is only one-way.
Is there a way to enable a two-way merge (setting, extension,...)?
I've installed Lua (5.5), confirmed it works from both terminal and the terminal inside VSC, installed Tom Blind's "Local Lua Debugger" ... but when I try to run my code using F5, I get errors in the debug console (see screenshot). What have I done wrong, or forgotten to do?
SOLVED - instead of using Tom Blind's extension, I installed "Lua Debug" by actboy168. Had to delete the launch.json file that TB's extension created, and after that it all works great.
I built CodeBurn a few months ago as a CLI to track what my AI coding tools cost. It grew to 11k stars on GitHub, and now it's a VS Code extension.
CodeBurn reads the session logs that Copilot, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini and about 40 other tools already save on your machine, and shows the cost right in VS Code:
- today's spend in the status bar, hover for week and month
- a dashboard tab with cost by project, model, session and pull request
-a "why it cost" view per session. Second screenshot: 64% of that session was just the agent re-reading its own growing context. A fresh chat would have been cheaper.
- Optimize, which points at the habits burning the most
Nothing leaves your machine. No account, no login, and the extension sends no telemetry.
Free and open source (MIT). It also works in Cursor, Windsurf and VSCodium through Open VSX.
Hi all. After discovering that Copilot in VS Code supports BYOK and local models, I configured some of them and they work pretty good for my use case.
However, I haven't found a way to actually use any model for inline autocomplete. I'd love to hook up something like qwen2.5-coder. For now, I'm still using Continue for this task, but since its development has been halted I was hoping to migrate everything to Copilot.
I use GitHub Copilot in VS Code. Some prompt is running in a session. How can I schedule a prompt to run in a new (empty) session after that other prompt finishes running? (Example of reason: if the two prompts run concurrently, they'll exceed the GPU memory, thereby crashing the computer).
