One Tip a Week: Keyboard Shortcuts for Moving Focus in VS Code

This week’s tip of the week is all about configuring some shortcuts that allow you to move focus between the editor and the integrated terminal in VS Code.

By default, CTRL + backtick toggles the integrated terminal. I use this all the time.

I use to struggle with moving back and forth between the terminal and the current tab in the editor. Toggling the terminal closes the terminal panel, and focus is brought back to the current tab in the editor, but what if you want to toggle between the two without closing the integrated terminal panel?

No problem! Just add another keyboard shortcut! What I ended up with was the following for my keyboard shortcuts.

{
  ...
  // Toggle between terminal and editor focus
  { "key": "ctrl+`", "command": "workbench.action.terminal.focus" },
  {
    "key": "ctrl+`",
    "command": "workbench.action.focusActiveEditorGroup",
    "when": "terminalFocus"
  },
  // Toggle integrated terminal panel
  {
    "key": "ctrl+escape",
    "command": "workbench.action.terminal.toggleTerminal"
  }
}

So now, toggling between the editor and integrated terminal can be done using CTRL + backtick and if I want to close the integrated terminal panel, I use CTRL + ESC.

Want to up your VS Code keyboard shortcuts game? Check out the official keybindings documentation.

That’s it! Short and sweet. Until the next one!