30 Favorite Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

Here is a list of my favorite Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts that I use all the time to increase my productivity and perform repetitive tasks with ease. I have tested these shortcuts on VS 2010, but most of them work on VS 2008 too. You can bookmark this link and make them your favorites too!

Note: I am using the US Keyboard Layout!

Navigation Shortcuts



Ctrl + ]Moves the cursor to the matching brace in the source file
Ctrl + Hyphen (-) Moves cursor to its previous position
Ctrl + Shift + Hyphen (-)Moves cursor to the next browsed line of code
Shift + F7Switch between the Design and Source View of the document
Ctrl + TabDisplays the IDE Navigator with the current document selected. Allows you to navigate open documents. Also try Alt+W+2
Ctrl + Shift + FDisplays the ‘Find in Files’ tab of the ‘Find and Replace’ dialog box
Ctrl + IActivates Incremental Search by searching for the next occurrence of the input text. You can even use F3
Shift + F12Displays a list of all references for the symbol selected
Ctrl + /Moves focus to the Find/Command box



Editing Shortcuts



Ctrl + K + CComment a Line or an entire selected block
Ctrl + K + UUncomment a Line or an entire selected block
Ctrl + LCuts the current line
Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V Duplicate a line


Window Shortcuts



Shift + Alt + Enter Toggle Full Screen Mode
Ctrl + M + OCollapses all Regions to provide a high level overview of the types and members in the source file
Ctrl + M + LToggles all previously collapsed Regions
/Collapses all tabs in a Toolbox
*Expands all tabs in a Toolbox. If * does not work, use Shift + 8 for ENU keyboards as explained here
Shift + EscCloses the current Tool Window with focus


Code Completion Shortcuts



Ctrl + Period (.) Expands the Smart Tag Menu (Usually when you rename a method or need to add a ‘using’ statement). You can also use Alt+Shift+F10
Tab Inserts expanded code snippet using a shortcut (for example enter the keyword ‘class’ and hit Tab twice)
Ctrl + SpaceCompletes the current word in the completion list


Other Shortcuts



Ctrl + Shift + BBuild the solution. You can even try F6
F5Start the application with Debugging
Ctrl + F5Start the application without Debugging
F9Sets or Removes a breakpoint at the current line
Ctrl + Shift + SSave all unsaved files
Ctrl + Alt + LShow Solution Explorer
Ctrl + Shift + ADisplays the Add New Item dialog box
Alt + Shift + ADisplays the Add Existing Item dialog box

You can also download the Visual Studio 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts Poster






About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal
Suprotim Agarwal, Developer Technologies MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) is the founder and contributor for DevCurry, DotNetCurry and SQLServerCurry. He is the Chief Editor of a Developer Magazine called DNC Magazine. He has also authored two Books - 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls. and The Absolutely Awesome jQuery CookBook.

Follow him on twitter @suprotimagarwal.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget these indispensable debugging shortcuts:

F9 set/clear breakpoint
F10 step next
F11 step into
Shift+F11 return current function
F5 continue
Shift+F6 stop execution

Alt+4 Variables
Alt+7 Call Stack

Francesco Biacca said...

very useful!
just a note: you should underline that they work on us config.

For example, if you guys use the italian versione, you have to

ctrl + ì

to go to the matching brace

Anonymous said...

One of my personal favorites:

Ctrl + K, Ctrl + D

...for auto-formatting messy code / html.

Also Ctrl + K, Ctrl + K for setting code bookmarks.

Suprotim Agarwal said...

Francesco: Thanks! I have added a note.

Other: Thanks for your comments

Anonymous said...

CTRL + L is a winner!

Anonymous said...

Ctrl + ] is the most usefull thingi have learnt all year thanks

Anonymous said...

My favorite keyboard shortcut in C# keyset is Ctrl+E,D. I found the keyboard shortcuts here first:
www.allshortcuts.com.

Pavel Vladov said...

Here's my favourite list of The Most Useful Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts.

Anonymous said...

don't forget:
Ctrl+R, Ctrl+R

this is for doing a rename that will act also on comments

Jw said...

While debugging:

Shift + F9: Open Quick Watch with editor selected content

Alt + NumPad *: Jump cursor in editor to current debugging line