Visual Studio Key Bindings How To Edit The

The truth is, we spend tons of hours working in an application, and keyboard shortcuts become automatic to us, the same muscle memory that great pianists or sports players have.

If you suddenly give a virtuoso pianist a piano where the keys are half as wide and the sharpflat keys are below as opposed to above the natural keys, they will struggle to make even the most basic melodies while they learn the new arrangement.

Likewise, when it comes to keyboard shortcuts in your favorite IDE, any change can be disorienting quickly.

Luckily, Visual Studio for Mac offers a ton of customizations to key bindings that will allow you get configure your key combinations to your liking.

The first time Visual Studio for Mac is launched on a computer, you will receive a prompt directing you to pick your favorite key mapping.

But what if you want even more customizations Well, Visual Studio for Mac has you covered there as well.

There may be custom mappings that youve used in other IDEs, or specific commands that are outside the bounds of the array of preconfigured options.

With the Key Bindings selection window, you can map every possible command within the IDE to a specific key.

To see the Key Binding options, select Visual Studio Preferences Environment Key Bindings.

The most immediate option you see is that there is a dropdown available for various Schemes which map to the options that new users see when they first install the IDE.

To get started, you can either scroll through the list of available commands, or search for the command in the search box.

The list of available commands is organized by type of command and can be collapsed for easier navigation.

Once you find the command you would like to map, you can select it and then type the desired key binding in Edit Binding followed by clicking Apply.

In the below GIF, I set the binding for New Breakpoint to C ontrol-Shift- B.

Visual Studio Key Bindings How To Edit The

In the below GIF, you can see how to edit the New File command to map to Control-Shift-N from the default C ommand-N.

Youll notice that all I need to do is type in the command I prefer and click apply.

If you want to add multiple bindings, simply click Add instead of Apply.

To ensure that each key binding is unique, Visual Studio for Mac checks against all configured commands and warns you of a duplicate if one is detected.

The GIF below shows what happens when mapping the New Breakpoint command to the Command-C keyboard binding which conflicts with Copy.

For any issues that you run into when using Visual Studio for Mac, please Report a Problem.

Visual Studio For Mac Key Bindings