29 Keyboard Shortcuts for Faster Development Workflow

Taking a small amount of time to learn and consciously apply keyboard shortcuts will improve your productivity and save you a ton of time over the course of your career. Over-reliance on the mouse is slow, not to mention unhealthy for your mouse hand which may be overworked as it is. Before we begin, let’s take a moment to mourn all the good ideas which popped into our heads but never saw the light of day because we forgot them while we were still trying to complete the last keyboard action. No more!

Mac note: replace CTRL with ⌘ unless otherwise noted.

Caret Navigation

ARROW KEYS — Adjacent navigation

HOME — Jump to the beginning of the current line
END — Jump to the end of the current line
I cannot overstate how useful these keys are. If I had only one takeaway from this post it would be these. They’ll take you to the start/end of current line even if it’s off the screen (no more clumsy mouse scrolling!).
Laptop note: Fn + Left Arrow for HOME and Fn + Right Arrow for END

CTRL + ARROW KEYS — Navigate word by word

CTRL + HOME — Jump to beginning of file
CTRL + END — Jump to end of file

Selection

SHIFT + Any Navigation — Select all text between start and end points
Do not sleep on SHIFT + HOME and SHIFT + END!

CTRL + A — Select all (entire document)
Great to use with Copy or Cut.

DOUBLE CLICK — Select entire word
Stops at punctuation! No more trying to use your mouse to select everything but that comma; just double click the word itself!

Editing

CTRL + C — Copy
CTRL + X — Cut
CTRL + V — Paste
Note: sometimes SHIFT is additionally required, for example in the terminal.

CTRL + Z — Undo
CTRL + Y — Redo
Mac note: Redo is SHIFT + ⌘ + Z instead

BACKSPACE — Delete character behind text cursor
Mac note: this key is called DELETE

DELETE — Delete character ahead of text cursor
Mac note: this key is called FORWARD DELETE

Don’t rely only on Backspace! Use both.

Bonus Generic Shortcuts

CTRL + S — Save
Many developers code with autosave on, but other applications don’t always offer autosave. I got in the habit of frequently saving with this shortcut.

CTRL + F — Find on page

ALT + TAB — Switch to another open window/application
SHIFT + ALT + TAB — Cycle through windows in opposite direction
Mac note: replace ALT with ⌘

WINDOWS + D — Minimize everything, go directly to the desktop
Mac note: try ⌘ + F3 for this effect

Tabbing to the desktop can be tedious when many windows are open, as is often the case during development. This last shortcut will take you straight there.

VSCode Shortcuts

There are tons of these; I’m only going to go over a few clutch ones here.

CTRL + ` — Open terminal

ALT + UP/DOWN ARROW — Move current line up/down
Mac note: replace ALT with ⌥
If you have multiple lines selected this will move them all.

CTRL + / — Comment out entire selection

CTRL + ] — Indent entire selection
CTRL + [ — Unindent entire selection
Easy way to clean up messy indentation.

CTRL + G — Jump to line #
Error on line 223? This shortcut will take you straight there.

F2 — Rename variable
This beautiful functionality allows you to rename every appearance of a variable throughout your code at once. It knows about scope so it won’t rename other variables with the same name elsewhere.

F12 — Go to declaration
This will take you directly to where a variable was declared! Wild. I expect this to be a potent teaching tool as well.

Takeaways

Familiarizing yourself with new keys can be uncomfortable at first, but at least try out the HOME and END keys! And please use Cut, Undo, Redo, and Select All, I beg you.