VS Code shortcuts grouped by what you are doing

Multi-cursor and selection

This is the group that replaces a regex find-and-replace most of the time, and it is far less risky because you can see every edit as you make it.

Gotcha: with several cursors active, Home, End, and the word-jump keys all move independently on each line. That is what makes multi-cursor useful on lines of different lengths, and what makes a stray arrow key so confusing.

Search and replace

Gotcha: workspace search honors .gitignore by default, so a hit inside dist/ or node_modules/ will not appear until you toggle the gear icon. That saves you most of the time and confuses you the rest.

Debugging

The function keys here are the same across every language extension, which is most of the reason to debug in the editor instead of a browser panel.

Gotcha: a logpoint is the underrated one. It prints an expression to the Debug Console every time the line runs and never pauses execution, which means you can instrument a running app without editing a single file or leaving a stray console statement in a commit.

Settings worth changing

Open the JSON directly with Ctrl+Shift+P then "Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON)". These are the entries that change how the editor feels rather than how it looks.

{
  // Formatting and lint on save - removes an entire class of review comment
  "editor.formatOnSave": true,
  "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode",
  "editor.codeActionsOnSave": { "source.fixAll.eslint": "explicit" },
  "files.trimTrailingWhitespace": true,
  "files.insertFinalNewline": true,

  // Saving and tabs
  "files.autoSave": "onFocusChange",
  "workbench.editor.enablePreview": false,  // stop tabs replacing each other
  "explorer.confirmDragAndDrop": false,

  // Reading long files
  "editor.stickyScroll.enabled": true,      // keeps the enclosing scope pinned
  "editor.minimap.enabled": false,          // reclaims real estate on a laptop
  "editor.rulers": [100],
  "editor.cursorSurroundingLines": 8,       // never edit on the last visible line

  // Editing quality of life
  "editor.linkedEditing": true,             // rename an HTML tag pair together
  "editor.suggestSelection": "first",
  "editor.wordWrap": "on",
  "editor.tabSize": 2,

  // Search and explorer noise
  "search.exclude": { "**/dist": true, "**/coverage": true, "**/.next": true },
  "explorer.fileNesting.enabled": true,     // collapse lock files under package.json

  // Git
  "git.autofetch": true,
  "git.confirmSync": false,
  "diffEditor.ignoreTrimWhitespace": false,

  // Terminal
  "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.windows": "PowerShell",
  "terminal.integrated.scrollback": 10000
}

Gotcha: anything that changes formatting belongs in a checked-in .vscode/settings.json rather than your user settings, so every contributor produces identical diffs. User settings are for how you like to work; workspace settings are for how the repo works.