Setting Custom Shortcuts in Visual Studio Code

I have been using Visual Studio for the last 4 years for all sorts of learning and development projects. Now that I have moved my focus a bit towards Node.js and switched to Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, I feel a bit of uneasiness at times due to the different shortcut keys.

Visual Studio Code provides us a feature to can change the shortcut keys according to our preference, and that is the scope of this blog.

In Visual Studio, the shortcut for Code Formatting is Ctrl+k Ctrl+D but in Visual Studio Code, it's Shift+Alt+F. 

Let's try and change it to Ctrl+k Ctrl+D

Step 1: In your Visual Studio Code windows, go to File->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcut

This will open two files beside each other like in the screenshot below:

Step 2: Now, on the window on the right i.e. the keybindings.json file, you can define your own shortcut in the below format: 

// Place your key bindings in this file to overwrite the defaults  
[ {  
    "key": "ctrl+k ctrl+d", "command":"editor.action.format"  

}  
] 

In the above code, we have defined that the set of keys, Ctrl+k Ctrl+D, will fulfill the command of formatting the code in the code editor. 

Now both the commands, Ctrl+K Ctrl+D and Shift+Alt+F work as code format keys in Visual Studio Code. 

Hope this article, helped in making coding with Visual Studio Code easier.