The goal of this article is to provide examples and strategies for making selections in your editor, (mostly) without using the mouse.

We will also take a deep dive into Multi-line editing.

Beginner level 💻

Shift + Arrow Key modifies selection

Ctrl + Arrow Key skips to end of word

End skips to end of line

Home skips to first character of a line

pressing home again skips to begining of a line

Intermediate Level 🪄

Leverage Shift with other controls to make selections more efficiently

Shift + Ctrl + Arrow Key selects full words

End → Shift + Home OR Home → Shift + End selects full lines

On any line, from any position, press home and then shift + end to highlight the entire line
you can also do the reverse, end and then shift + home

Ctrl + W Smart selection expansion

Ctrl + W will expand your selection outward, starting with the word, then expanding outwards to cover entire strings, expressions, functions etc.

This is especially useful for long strings such as import lines

Advanced Level 🚀

Bringing it all together with multi-line editing

Part 1 - Initiate Multiline Editing

There are a few ways to begin multi-line editing:

1. Double Tap & Hold Ctrl + Arrow Keys

• Press control twice rapidly
• On the second press, do not release control
• Move arrow keys up and down to add or remove additional cursors
• Release control afterwards

2. Middle Mouse & Drag

Very similar to 1, just with a mouse.

• Useful for quickly selecting multiple entries that are all tabbed one line after another

3. Alt + Shift + Click

Useful for selecting repeating coding blocks that are separated

4. Ctrl + F

You can add also cursors with the Ctrl F window, but you really need to know what you’re doing

Part 2 - Getting the most out of multi line editing

Multiline editing can save you a ton of time writing code with patterns

• switch blocks
• refactoring dependencies

Example 1 - Switch Blocks From Enum

There’s a lot to unpack in this example so let’s break it down…

• Middle click + drag to select all enum keys
• Ctrl + Left arrow (or home) to go to the beginning of the line
• Ctrl + Shift + Right Arrow to select the entire enum (Ctrl + W would work here too)
• Ctrl + C to copy the selection
• click into the switch
• Ctrl + V to paste the selection
• double tab Ctrl + hold then up arrow to add cursors on each line
• home to go to the beginning of each enum
• type out the repeated case code on each line
• end to go to the end of the line
• type : to complete the case statement
• enter to create a new line at each cursor
• type out repeated code on each line return toTitleCase();
• move cursors up to select the entire enum qualifier with each cursor
• Ctrl + C to copy each enum
• move down to the parenthesis
• Ctrl + V to paste each copied enum into their respective line
• end to quickly add a semicolon at the end of each line

Example 2 - Refactoring Angular DI

The breakdown of this example:

• Middle click + drag to select all lines
• press home
• press Shift + end
• press Ctrl + X (cut)
• Delete the constructor as it’s no longer needed
• press Ctrl + V (paste)
• press home
• double tap + hold Ctrl, up arrow to select all lines
• press Ctrl + Right Arrow
• type readonly
• press Ctrl + Right Arrow
• type = inject(
• press end
• type );
• import inject
• done