Keyboard Shortcuts for Visual Studio

Knowing just a few keyboard shortcuts can improve your workflow dramatically. That is true for a general-purpose tool like Microsoft Office and even more for Visual Studio. The only question is where to start, then Visual Studio can not only adapt to your needs but also change its shortcuts completely.

 

Plain Visual Studio

Visual Studio offers an endless number of shortcuts. So many that there is a dedicated web site for them: VisualStudioShortcuts.com

For the 2017 edition you can choose between 578 key combinations, what is far too much for me to learn. Anton Angelov wrote a two part blog post (part 1 & part 2) on the 38 most useful shortcuts – a much better place to start.

 

Visual Studio with ReSharper

ReSharper brings its own key mappings to Visual Studio. Depending on what scheme you choose you need a different set of shortcuts:

If you don’t know which one to choose: Look at the shortcuts and take the one you like more.

 

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code offers even more options when it comes to keyboard shortcuts. Your first decision point is the operating system you use:

If you don’t like the built-in shortcuts you can go to the store and add one of the various keymap extensions (like Vim, Atom or even Visual Studio). Your options are endless and the same is true for the shortcuts.

 

Conclusion

Keyboard shortcuts help you to navigate your code much faster. With that many options it’s not a simple task to learn them, but you can start small and just memorize the 10 commands you use every day. Let me know if you have a better starting set for shortcuts.

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