Multiline editing in Visual Studio Code

Question

Is it possible to enable multiline editing like in Sublime Text   For example  press Ctrl to place additional cursor carets and being able to write delete on multiple places in the document at one time

User · Answer

NO MOUSE  For macOS  I found this to be very quick   CMD   f  To search the  word  you want to change  Option   Enter To select all word you search for   Just update the first word and it will update all the selected

User · Answer

Working solution for me was first selecting the required text to edit and then using CTRL   F2 to select all matching data in the page  You may also use CTRL Shift L as suggested by  lesterCovax     Please Note  The above solution uses the inherent ability of VSCode editor to select similar text across the entire page  and therefore  be careful    For me the above solution of Ctrl   ALT   Arrowkeys did not work as it caused the screen to change its display orientation against selecting the lines in VSCode

User · Answer

Step 1     Select the word to be replaced   Step 2   Ctrl   F this will select its multiple occurrences  Step 3    Alt   Enter this will set cursor at all the found occurrences    Step 4   Just start typing the new word

User · Answer

I think it depends on your Visual Studio Code version  Mine is Linux version Visual Studio Code 1 7 2     quot key quot    quot ctrl shift up quot            quot command quot    quot editor action insertCursorAbove quot                                         quot when quot    quot editorTextFocus quot        quot key quot    quot shift alt up quot             quot command quot    quot editor action insertCursorAbove quot                                         quot when quot    quot editorTextFocus quot        quot key quot    quot ctrl shift down quot          quot command quot    quot editor action insertCursorBelow quot                                         quot when quot    quot editorTextFocus quot        quot key quot    quot shift alt down quot           quot command quot    quot editor action insertCursorBelow quot                                         quot when quot    quot editorTextFocus quot     The point is the shortcuts are not same in all machines  so you should check your configuration  Go to menu   Menu File   Preferences   Keyboard Shortcuts  Search for editor action insertCursorAbove and editor action insertCursorBelow and see your current configurations  You may change them if they conflict with operating system s shortcut keys

User · Answer

In Windows  the below combinations work for me    Ctrl   Shift   Alt   down arrow Ctrl   Shift   Alt   up arrow

User · Answer

In Visual Studio Code just press Alt and place your cursor to the edit place where you want to edit  and right click to select

User · Answer

On Windows  you hold Ctrl Alt while pressing the up   or down   arrow keys to add cursors  Mac    Opt   Cmd     Linux  Shift Alt      Note that third-party software may interfere with these shortcuts  preventing them from working as intended  particularly Intel s HD Graphics software on Windows  see comments for more details   If you experience this issue  you can either disable the Intel other software hotkeys  or modify the VS Code shortcuts  described below    Press Esc to reset to a single cursor   Or  as Isidor Nikolic points out  you can hold Alt and left click to place cursors arbitrarily   You can view and edit keyboard shortcuts via   File   Preferences   Keyboard Shortcuts  Documentation  https   code visualstudio com docs customization keybindings Official VS Code Keyboard shortcut cheat sheets  https   code visualstudio com shortcuts keyboard-shortcuts-windows pdf https   code visualstudio com shortcuts keyboard-shortcuts-macos pdf https   code visualstudio com shortcuts keyboard-shortcuts-linux pdf

User · Answer

In the latest release of Visual Studio Code  you can now drag the cursor while holding Option  Alt on Windows  to select the same column on multiple rows   To enable this  make sure you change your editor multiCursorModifier to look like this    editor multiCursorModifier    ctrlCmd    From the Visual Studio Code release notes 1 32 0      In the following video  the selection begins as a regular selection and then Alt is pressed and held until the mouse button is released

User · Answer

From the version 1 13  May 2017  you can finally change the default modifier key for creating multiple cursors  add to settings     editor multiCursorModifier    ctrlCmd    P S   The modifier  follow link  from this moment will be Alt

User · Answer

The solution from  maxime of using SHIFT   ALT   i worked for me  when I needed to quickly edit  20k lines in a file   Most of the other keyboard shortcuts mentioned are only useful for a limited number of line   SHIFT selecting the area you want to column edit  then pressing SHIFT   ALT   i is the most efficient way to handle this   What I accidentally discovered though   and hasn t been mentioned here yet  is that there is a limit of 10k lines in  cursor edit mode   there s an open Github feature request to increase it    This means that for extremely large files  it may be better to script your edits  rather than doing it manually   For those like  specimen that had to use shortcuts like CTRL   SHIFT   L  default binding is Select all occurrences of current selection  to accomplish this  you should check that you don t have a keymap extension installed   You can check by searching for  recommended keymaps in the extensions pane  going to File  gt  Preferences  gt  Keymaps  CTRL K CTRL M    The default  Windows  keymap can be found in PDF form HERE  or you can go to File  gt  Preferences  gt  Keyboard Shortcuts to find modify the current bindings   There is also more in-depth key bindings documentation HERE

User · Answer

For me  Alt    Middle Click  scroll wheel  worked fine You have to click on Alt then long click on  Middle Click then scroll Up  or down

User · Answer

If you re using Linux  there s a possibility of a conflict with Alt   click  which is the default for  moving a window    You can go to menu Settings  rarr  Window Behavior  rarr  Window Behavior  rarr  Actions tab  Just remove Alt   left  hold  and it will work   This is the best way  because you don t need to hold two   keys to do such a simple task

User · Answer

I am using the vscodevim extension  so I m not sure if this is a common problem  But  I was having the issue where Ctrl   Alt   UpArrow flipped my screen upside down   Looking at the Visual Studio Code Basics  I don t know if they changed this in a recent update   it says to use   Ctrl   Alt   Shift    Up down

User · Answer

Box Selecting  Windows  shift   alt   Mouse Left Button  macOS  shift   option   Click  This is contrary to what is mentioned in an answer to Does Visual Studio Code have box select multi-line edit

User · Answer

On Windows    Select one line you want to change everywhere   with the mouse cursor  Press CTRL   F2 and you will start editing all lines at once

User · Answer

On Mac it is   Option   Command while pressing the up   or down   arrow keys

User · Answer

Just Opt   click works for me on Mac

User · Answer

In addition to all of the answers  there is one more way  Select the lines you want and then press    Windows  Shift   Alt   i Mac  shift   option   i   This puts a cursor in every row in the selection

User · Answer

version 1 43  February 2020  You can now toggle column selection mode  which changes mouse gestures and arrow keys  via   Menu Bar  gt  Selection  gt  Column Selection Mode Ctrl Shift P  Show All Commands   gt  Toggle Column Selection Mode Bind your key for command  quot editor action toggleColumnSelection quot    Note  There is a  quot Column Selection quot  panel in the status bar after activation  which you can press to disable it again

User · Answer

Use Ctrl   D to use multi word edit of same words in Windows and Linux   Use CMD   D for Mac

User · Answer

Solved using just two steps    Ctrl   F Alt   Enter   It s equal to Sublime Text s Alt   F3

User · Answer

You can just Alt   click for additional cursors  And as already mentioned  Ctrl   Alt     or

User · Answer

My settings  Windows 8 1 64 bits  Visual Studio Code version 1 33 1   Problem  Conflict with keyboard shortcuts of Intel HD Graphics 4000  I had a problem when I was using the default shortcuts of the Visual Studio Code  Ctrl   Alt   UP  Ctrl   Alt   DOWN   In my case  these commands were turning my screen in 0   and 180   respectively  It s happening  because there is the Graphic Intel application installed on my computer  Then  I just disable the shortcuts of this application   Here is an tutorial to help someone

User · Answer

On Linux Fedora  I tried with Fedora 31  with KDE  go to         System Settings   Window Management   Window Behavior   Window Actions   Inner Window  Titlebar and Frame Actions   Click Left Click Box   Pick Do nothing  replacing move drag       Now you can select multiple lines with Alt   Left Click

User · Answer

I am using the Sublime Text keymap and the keybinding provided by the top answer did not seem to work    Could be some conflicts between Visual Studio Code and sublime keymaps   The keybinding recommended by  Han works for me  much appreciated      Enter multiline cursor mode with Ctrl   Shift   Up Down Exit with Esc      Sidenote  Below is a small example of using Emmet together with the multiline cursor  enabled and disabled with these key bindings listed above

User · Answer

As of April 2018  version 1 23  you can now also use the middle mouse button to multiline select   box select

User · Answer

I am using the latest version of VS code i e   1 46 1  May 2020  in Windows 10  Just press Alt mouse left click on the lines you want to select  This will let you select multiple lines at once and let you edit them  Also Press Esc to exit from it  This is really helpful if you re coming from sublime text

User · Answer

Windows 10 pro x64  Here have some ways    Alt   click Alt   Ctrl   up down Keybindings  Ctrl   click      it doesn t work

User · Answer

I wanted to select multiple lines and hit  quot something quot  to have a cursor for each select lines  similar to Ctrl   Shift   L in Sublime Text   This action in Visual Studio Code is called  quot Add Cursors to Line Ends quot   This was tested in Visual Studio Code 1 51 1 and works on both Windows and Mac  Here is the way   Select the lines you want to have multiple cursors  Simply hit Alt   Shift-I   You now have one cursor per selected line

[visual-studio-code] Multiline editing in Visual Studio Code

(NO MOUSE) For macOS, I found this to be very quick!

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