Move Lines Up and Down in Visual Studio Code

One feature I find very useful in a text editor is the ability to move a line or a group of lines up or down with a keyboard shortcut. I discovered this possibility in Sublime Text and now I want it in all my editors.

Visual Studio Code supports this action with the Alt+Up and Alt+Down keyboard shorcuts.

Use the Sublime Text shortcuts

If you are used to Sublime Text and your brain is wired to the Ctrl+Shift+Up and Ctrl+Shift+Down shortcuts, Visual Studio Code can be configured. Note that those shortcuts are used by default for the cursorUpSelect and cursorDownSelect commands but those are also accessible from Shift+Up and Shift+Down.

1. Open the keyboard shortcuts configuration (File > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts).

2. In the keybindings.json file on the right side, add the following bindings:

    // Place your key bindings in this file to overwrite the defaults
    [
      {
        "key": "ctrl+shift+up",
        "command": "editor.action.moveLinesUpAction",
        "when": "editorTextFocus"
      },
      {
        "key": "ctrl+shift+down",
        "command": "editor.action.moveLinesDownAction",
        "when": "editorTextFocus"
      }
    ]
   

3. Save the file and enjoy!