My Favourite Shortcuts - Visual Studio 2017
I've been using Visual Studio since I started programming. At first I used a lot my mouse to scroll, select, copy, paste text. Or to open or switch between windows. When I started getting better I realized that the time moving my hand to the mouse, doing the task, and moving my hand back to the keyboard is slowing me down. So I started learning some of the useful shortcuts of Visual Studio and I'm coding much faster now.
Selecting / manipulating text
- So you obviously know
CTRL + C
andCTRL + V
andCTLR + X
too! But did you know that if you want to copy a line you don't have to select it, just move your cursor to the line (with the arrow keys) and pressCTRL + C
. - Or did you know Visual Studio holds some of your recent clipboard values. Press
CTRL + V
multiple itimes to get your clipboards before your current one! - If you missed the clipboard value you can press
CTRL + SHIFT + V
to go backwards! CTRL + SHIFT + L
removes a line without copying it to the clipboard.CTRL + UP/DOWN ARROW
Scrolls the text without moving your cursor.CTRL + W
selects a word.CTRL + LEFT/RIGHT ARROW
moves the cursor from word to word. Combine that withSHIFT
and you can select text much faster.- After you've selected a text you can use
ALT + UP/DOWN ARROW
to move the text up or down a line!
Navigation
- You can move your cursor to a variable/method/class and press
F12
to go to the definition of it. - You can move your cursor to a variable/method/class and press
SHIFT + F12
to Display all references to it. - Obviously you can press
CTRL + F
to bring up the find window and find a text in your source file - You can press
CTRL + H
to bring up the replace window and pressALT +A
to replace all occurances - You can press
CTRL + T
and type in the name of a variable, class, method, select if from the list and press enter to go to it's definition - You can press
CTLR + K + K
it means you hold downCTRL
and pressK
twice to insert a bookmark at the current line
Formatting
- Select something and press
CTRL + K + F
to format that text, insert/remove whitespaces - Press
CTRL + M + M
to collapse/open a code block. You can collapse anything that has{
and}
- Press
CTRL + R + G
to remove unused using statements and sort them alphabetically - Press
ALT + ENTER
on something to bring up the Suggestions menu, navigate with the arrow keys and press eneter to apply a suggestion
Windows
- Press
CTRL + ALT + O
to bring up the output window - Press
CTRL + \ + E
to bring up the errors window - Press
CTRL + K + W
to bring up the bookmark window, you can select a bookmark with the arrow keys and pressF2
to rename that bookmark - Press
F7
in designer view to view the source code of the form, you can pressSHIFT + F7
in the source code view to open the designer view of the form - Hold down
CTRL + TAB
to navigate between open windows and pressTAB
to move forward orSHIFT + TAB
to move backwards, additionally you can keep theCTRL
held down and use the arrow keys to navigate between windows. When the window you want is selected just release theCTRL
key, and you will go to that window. - Press
CTRL + ALT + L
to open the solution explorer.
Debugging
- Press
F5
to start/continue the application,CTRL + F5
to stop the application orCTRL + SHIFT + F5
to stop the application - Press
F9
to insert a breakpoint - Press
CTRL + ALT + BREAK
to pause an application - When in break mode:
- Press
F10
to execute a statement and step over it - Press
F11
to execute a statement and step inside of it - Press
SHIFT + F11
to execute a statement and step out of it
- Press
Summary
So that was my list of the shortcuts I find really useful. There are far more shortcuts than in this list, so if I missed something you can always lookup the shortcuts your looking for in VS itself under Tools
> Options
> Envinroment
> Keyboard
. Comment down below your favourite shortcuts!
I hope this helps you to speed up your coding too!