Cursors are really powerful in VSCode, and it got me to start using the keyboard way less, and I want to share some of these tips.

nb: I mention ctrl since I’m using a windows machine, but these shortcuts will work the same on a mac with the cmd key.

Multi-selection

Let’s start with an easy one, shall we? Sometimes you want to select the same spot (read: column) on multiple lines, to do that you can hold the Shift + Alt and drag your mouse upwards or downwards, like so

You might’ve noticed that when selecting a word, VSCode will automatically highlight matching words, what’s cool is that you can select the matches by hitting ctrl + D to select the next match:

multi-selection

In reality I wanted to change the html tags only without selecting the header content, I can skip this selection using ctrl + K followed by ctrl + D

multi-selection with skipping

The Cursor look

You can change the cursor colour as part of the theme (see my previous post), but you can also control the cursor blinking animation as well in the settings

Cursor blinking options 😎

VSCode is highly customisable, for more, just explore the settings yourself as the options are self-explanatory, if you have any cool tips for VSCode, feel free to comment down below.