An extension for Visual Studio Code which provides region selection & operations similar to emacs.

Default Keybindings

key	explanation
ctrl+f	move selection cursor right
ctrl+b	move selection cursor left
ctrl+p	move selection cursor up
ctrl+n	move selection cursor down
right	move selection cursor right
left	move selection cursor left
up	move selection cursor up
down	move selection cursor down
ctrl+right	move selection cursor one word to the right
ctrl+left	move selection cursor one word to the left
ctrl+v	move selection cursor one page down
alt+v	move selection cursor one page up
ctrl+a	move selection cursor to start of line
ctrl+e	move selection cursor to end of line
alt+shift+,	move selection cursor to start of file
alt+shift+.	move selection cursor to end of file
ctrl+y	paste and stop selection
ctrl+w	cut and stop selection
alt+w	copy and stop selection
backspace	delete selected text and exit region mode
delete	delete selected text and exit region mode
ctrl+space	start region mode
ctrl+x space	start column region mode
ctrl+g	exit region mode

Custom Commands

command	explanation
emacs.action.clipboardCopyAction	Copy the selected region and exit region mode.
emacs.action.clipboardCutAction	Cut the selected region and exit region mode.
emacs.action.clipboardPasteAction	Paste over the selected region and exit region mode.
emacs.deleteLeft	Kill region and exit region mode.
emacs.deleteRight	Kill region and exit region mode.
emacs.startRegionMode	Start region mode with a single cursor.
emacs.startColumnRegionMode	Start region mode with multi-line cursors.
emacs.exitRegionMode	Exit any active region mode.

Compatibility With Other Extensions

It is possible to combine this extension with other cursor movement extensions.

You can use the inRegionMode context flag in the when clause of your keybind to provide different behaviour for region mode vs. cursor mode. The default keybinds are laid out as follows:

{
    "key": "DESIRED KEY",
    "command": "CURSOR MOVE COMMAND",
    "when": "editorTextFocus && !inRegionMode"
},
{
    "key": "DESIRED KEY",
    "command": "CURSOR MOVE & SELECT COMMAND",
    "when": "editorTextFocus && inRegionMode"
}

Contributing

If you'd like to add more features, feel free to send a pull request on GitHub.

Known Issues

• When cutting text (emacs.action.clipboardCutAction), sometimes only the line the cursor is on is removed, but the full region is sent to the clipboard. Not sure what the cause is - perhaps this is related to vscode#2933.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to t-yng for his original extension, which can be found here: t-yng/vscode-emacs-region.