We’ve put together a great cheat-sheet for VS Code Hotkeys! VS Code is an amazingly powerful editor with a TON of built-in hotkeys! There are so many we highly recommend you print them out and have the handy so you can quickly glance at them for memorization! Start working smarter, not harder by working more efficiently with these VS code hotkeys!
Configuring Hotkeys for Running and debugging in VSCode
The key idea of the video is to demonstrate how to use debugging features in VSCode and recommend extensions and hotkeys to make the debugging process easier and more efficient.
- 00:00 📝 The video discusses using debugging in VSCode and recommends two extensions for autohotkey, with Version 2 winning the Chinese guy’s t h q b for easier communication on YouTube.
- The video discusses using debugging in VSCode and recommends two extensions for autohotkey.
- Version 2 won the Chinese guy’s t h q b, so it’s easier to communicate with him on YouTube.
- 01:53 🔧 Install extensions for debugger and additional debuggers, change language association, configure file associations, and use debug or run button to execute scripts.
- Install the two extensions mentioned in the video to have access to a debugger and additional debuggers, which will appear at the bottom of the screen.
- Click on the language selection to change the language association and configure file associations, then use the debug button to run the script in debug mode or use the run button to run the script normally.
- 04:58 🔑 Change hotkeys in VSCode by accessing the key bindings in the hotkeys palette, using the f1 command to open keyboard shortcuts, and pasting the desired combination; for debugging in version 2, use the f5 hotkey or customize it in feature contributions, and you can launch the code in VSCode using a button.
- Change hotkeys in VSCode by finding the key bindings in the hotkeys palette, using the f1 command to open keyboard shortcuts, and pasting the desired combination, and for debugging in version 2, use the f5 hotkey or customize it in feature contributions.
- You can launch the code in VSCode by using a button.
- 07:01 🔧 To configure hotkeys for running and debugging in VSCode, simply go to the run and debug command, press F5, and it will set up the environment for you, making debugging easier with features like call stack and variable watching.
- To configure hotkeys for running and debugging in VSCode, go to the run and debug command, press the F5 hotkey, and it will automatically configure the environment for you.
- VSCode allows for easy debugging with features like call stack and variable watching, unlike other editors like Notepad++.
- 09:28 🔧 Use the “m” function to easily debug and view object data in VSCode by running the script and getting a message box with all key-value pairs listed.
- 11:05 🔍 You can view variables and objects while running a script in VSCode, access commands to view variables and recently executed lines, and debug in real-time without affecting the script.
- You can easily view variables and objects while running a script in VSCode by double-clicking on the script icon and checking the basic information about the variables.
- You can access various commands in VSCode to view variables, lines recently executed, and hotkeys, either by double-clicking on the icon or using the corresponding command.
- Debugging in VSCode allows you to easily understand what is happening in your script without adding extra code or message boxes, and you can make changes in real-time without affecting the script itself.
- 14:29 🔧 The debug view app in VSCode allows for quick debugging by sending messages or using the live debugger.
- The output debug command sends silent data to certain applications that are listening to it, such as IDEs, and if the IDE does not have a debugger, you can use the sys internal suite or the win debug view.
- The debug view app listens for debugging scripts and lists them, allowing for quick debugging by sending messages or using the live debugger.
- 16:44 🔑 Assign hotkeys that make sense to you for launching different functions in VSCode, taking into account the context in which they will work.
Transcript to creating Hotkeys for VS code
hey everyone it’s joe and isaias from the automator and we had a question someone wrote and asked about using debugging vs code and the thing that like i said i i think it’s an amazing tool i just don’t use it daily so i asked isaias to show us a couple things about how to use the how to start the debugger how to launch a program and how to launch a program you know inside vs code with both version one and version two so and then some other ways to peek inside objects if you’re not using the
debugger okay awesome so basically it is really about the extensions that you use as with those type of editors they come with very good tools but for other languages so then you have to find something for auto hotkey now there are some good extensions around and i think i could show you there’s two of them these are hockey plus plus by um mark weimer or you know sweden well the thing is that he forked it from that guy because the guy stopped maintaining it so this is the one that is supposedly a little bit more active i
haven’t i i don’t talk that much to that guy but this other guy the autohotkey version 2 won the t h q b why he’s a chinese guy by the way so if you’re trying to talk to him you will is this the one that when we were talking to dylan dylan yeah well inverted it using google translate or something yes exactly yeah yeah as so i think it was dimitri though so um yeah so that he kind of like talked to him so it makes a lot more sense because he’s using youtube all the time right right so no no no the thing is that um
this one is extremely active like i i messaged something to him and a few minutes later he’s actually talking back so that’s the reason why i use those two because usually they are the ones that are you know more active so after you install those two they usually come with a debugger already but there are additional debuggers that you can install and stuff like that but these two if you install them you’re good to go now after you have those two extensions what is going to happen is that here at the
bottom when you click on the language selection you should have our hotkey and our hotkey version too now you can change uh some things like for example and this is something that i would talk about really quickly you click on add hotkey version 2 here and then you click again and configure file association or some language settings for it now the language the association you can tell it like if every time you open an ahk file i want to open it with autohotkey version 2 or autohotkey that’s how you change the language
association and that’s what i do for ah2 files or whatever now after you have the language set up let’s go ahead and test this remember that you can on vs code just go ahead and place code or breakpoints that once you start debugging you will be able to watch objects and do other uh very interesting stuff with it watch all your variables and other things which is why i’m using vs code by itself right now because it has very good debugger capabilities now how do you run the script the script must be saved and how do i run it in
debug mode specifically that’s the question if you’re using the autohotkey version one language right it creates a little button up here that you see that it says debug hk script and it has a function key attached to it a hotkey attached to it now let me go ahead and show you something let’s go ahead and open up the extensions again once you open an extension once you install it the first thing i always do is click on feature contributions this tells you what the script can do or what that particular language can do
and specifically i would look for the commands now the commands are stuff that the language allows you to do and this line right here f9 tells me that hk debug runs the script in debug mode notice that you can open the help file by clicking ctrl f1 you can run the script normally that means without the debug mode with control f9 and run selection now you can change all those hotkeys all the time by just grabbing the id of that and just using the hotkey for vs code or just opening i don’t even know where to find
that like the the hotkeys palette i don’t even know i either use the f1 command to just open keyboard shortcuts which is quicker but i always know like i know my hotkey and i just press that which is k followed by a control k by followed by ctrl s just click on that it gives you the key bindings and now you paste what you just said like this and now you can change that to whatever combination you want and i would do the same with the other language support i just go to feature contributions now i know that for
version 2 if you want to debug the script it would be f5 and i will show you something you have to understand that you i usually find the commands first because of the following in adobe version one the language support that i have it creates a button up here that you can click and it runs in debug mode and notice that i placed a breaking point and it just entered but what happens is that uh the autohotkey2 language does not have the run button up here he hasn’t implemented that so you have to actually press the hotkey for it
so you have to go if you don’t know what the hotkey is you would go to feature contributions see debug and it says always f5 or switch it to whatever you want but you have to do this because the version 2 language does not have the run button up here i will talk to the guy to see if we can implement that later on but basically that’s something that you have to keep in mind you do have a button for it yeah i was that’s what i was doing the other day i happened to be someone asked me to to show demonstrate something you had
written so i said well it’s in version two let me just open the bs code and launch it and then i’m like hey how do i launch it no i couldn’t figure it out exactly now now if you don’t know if you if you do not have a button like how we had in this case you can still go here on the left to the run and debug command which is where you would actually debug so and and especially when you open the script in debug mode it usually brings you here and you can just simply click on run and debug and it tells you how you want to
run it and there are a few things that you have to keep in mind when you do this type of thing because you have to configure it if you press the hotkey the f5 hotkey it automatically does that for you and notice that i got an error right it automatically configures the environment for you and does everything that’s why i use the hotkey but if you if you know what you’re doing you can just go ahead and read a little bit how it works you can create a file you can run and debug in a specific environment you can
create an environment for it but just hitting the hotkey is going to get you that don’t worry now in this case let’s show something autohotkey version one let’s go ahead and run this i set f9 for this it broke here because i put a break point notice that i’m in the run and debug session and notice that now i have kind of like all my variables and if there is an object like this variable right here after i step over it now my object is defined here and i could access the data that’s the biggest
point about using bs code especially because i have the call stack and watching variables what does that mean the call stack is that it gives me a list of how i got to that point if one function calls another function and that function called another function in here i would have kind of like a trace of all those functions and i know how i got there and just to chime in though um site for auto hotkey has this functionality as well exactly studio do you know if notepad plus plus does oh it doesn’t have debug at all does it
it does well you have to install kind of like an extension for it but yes and the extension the the gui is really bad like i is is not really intuitive i don’t like it right but in general this is the reason why i go and use this thing but what happens if you do not have vs code or you do not have debugging capabilities what would you do well or you just didn’t want to have always launch it in debug mode but you wanted to peek inside of an object right in that case you can use the m function created by mainstreet
uh which we could share and i’ll put the link below right here somewhere those two the m share actually needs the objective string function as well so what what happens is the objective string is the one that actually creates the string and the m function kind of like has a message box or something to show it that’s so what you do is you run the script and if you continue going you would get a message box and it will list every single one of the key value pairs and stuff like you know it is a little bit uh good if you do not
have debugging capabilities set up right and just to clear uh to be clear just to help uh if you go on line four and define a new variable you know on line four just var clone equals fred whatever you want uh yeah in quotes now after the obj put a comma and put var it will it will iterate over if you use commas to delimit the stuff it will right it would allow you to put multiple things here okay two commas and it’ll actually put in a blank line in between the two which is sometimes really nice if you want to
break up the stuff um but so basically it gives you a lot of a lot of um options as to actually how to how to display the data and no you know i guess put in two double quotes in between so yeah so so it would be like an empty yeah maybe that would help right i thought it did it by default but apparently not hold on yes that’s okay yeah there yeah so in general this allows you to take a peek onto variables and objects very easily yeah and then just demonstrate the list bars as well just in case people don’t aren’t aware of
that right if you are running a script it doesn’t matter if even if you are not using any type of ide or whatever if the script is running you can always double click on their icon here and you can see the last uh code that we run yeah right and you can also check the variables in their contents which would give you information basic information about you know it will not kind of like detail it it’s just going to tell you that there’s an object there but it’s not going to detail it for you and if you
also can take a look at well that was the point like looking at the variables but show it put it as a command okay oh of course but both this is good too because a lot of people aren’t aware the best stuff is there you can also say list vars and that’s a command that you have and you can also do the other thing of showing other information that is on the script many of the commands that you have here like the lines were recently executed on variables and everything all of that is accessible via commands on the script so
don’t worry you do have here you have list lines list vars list hotkeys and all of those commands allow you to do this it will actually open that part of this gui would perform the same action so double clicking on the icon or just going ahead and using the list hotkeys command it gives you the same type of information so if you are debugging if you’re if you want to kind of like get into the this type of easier way of knowing what is going on with your script and you do not have an ide available that at that
moment yeah just add those lines on your script and you will be able to get the information that you need without having to put a message box or something because that stops the script you know so that’s basically my my biggest point with with with debugging is that i do not have to add any piece of code i just look over it stop the script and i could watch it real time and change information on it without me having to add a message box or add a a yeah but you added a break point but that didn’t modify my script at all
so right now i just checked the information and i could save the file and give it to you and nothing will happen if you have like a lot of message boxes around your script you have to remember to remove them later right whenever you’re going to share this but typically when you’re debugging you’re doing one at a time right so right anyway i’m not knocking it i’ve seen you use a lot it’s awesome i’m just saying you can debug with other approaches of course no now here’s the other part
the output debug command is the one that is silent instead of creating a message box that you know stops the script you can set some text in here and the script will continue working like let’s just put here let me remove this breakpoint and what is going to happen is that it’s going to send uh silent data this information is only being sent to certain types of applications that are listening to it right now the ides and the ones that you mentioned site for our hockey hk studio all major aid ides have a debug console that is listening
to those type of messages so even if you forget to remove the output debug your script is not going to show that to anybody just those apps which is good it won’t error out if they run it from notepad no exactly it’s not you’re not going to have any any errors anything so now if your ide does not have a debugger or you know an app an application that captures those messages you can always go and find the the sis internal sweep brings brings with a win debug mother uh uh debug view i think it is dvd view
gbg yeah that sounds right i think is dvd view or something like that ah there it is so this debug view app what it does is that it is just listening for debugging [Music] scripts whenever somebody sends a message notice that that message came in now if you open this is the thing it is listening to any app that is sending messages and it would just list them up in here you would have to just filter out a little bit of information and you have some filtering and stuff like that but in general this is a debugging client that just listens in general yeah
which is very cool right so all of these tools allow you to kind of like debug your script quickly just send your messages or use the live debugger it doesn’t matter there’s many ways for you to do that the only thing is that we wanted to just point out how to start with that yeah well and and also just to reinforce what i the first thing i would do if i was using this is go assign hotkeys that make sense to you for launching each of those things right because you’re going to use it eight million times i mean it’s so right it’s one of
the most frequent things you do so assign a hotkey that makes sense to you i just i just went ahead and in the keyboard shortcut just put ask and i just start looking at oh look debug okay i just changed that to whatever i like and notice that you do have some contexts that you can set like for example this f9 hotkey only works if the language is ahk awesome so you you can change the context of when it’s going to happen and look at that if not in debug mode and the editor language is hk2 so you have to be
that hotkey is only going to work on that context so just take a look at it switch them to whatever you want if you know about a little bit of context in vs code just set the context for that script you should be good to go awesome thanks man
