How to center the editor window back on the cursor in VSCode?

Question

I'm using VSCode as my text editor. I'm curious, is there a keybinding for centering the editor window on the cursor, when the window is a lot of lines below/above it such that it's not visible on the screen? I've tried looking at the default keybindings by going to FIle > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts, but I see no such options for centering the window.

Panada

Answer 1

There is no such keybinding / command built-in.

I couldn't stand that either, so I created a VSCode extension. You can find it and install it here on the marketplace. The default shortcut is CTRL + L.

Potful

is there such a plugin such that the screen is always centered on the cursor? I use vim as my primary text editor and I'm hoping VScode has similar functionality to this – Junker

Not that I am aware of. But sounds like an interesting extension to build. 🤔 – Potful

In that case it might be the first extension I build, haha – Junker

This is great! Why don't you implement it in the editor itself. To me, this looks like something that the editor by default show can benefit from. Just a thought. – Bedaub

@DanielSantos unfortunately VSCode is full of illogical choices for default settings, or in this case lack of them. – Brentwood

@PatrickMichaelsen have you made the extension, I'm trying to find an extension that will always center the cursor on the screen. – Grammalogue

Answer 2

If you want to always keep the cursor on the center, you can change the setting editor.cursorSurroundingLines to a really high number (100 is ok) and that should work.

Stagner

Great one! So helpful, why VS Code use 0 as surrounding lines ? – Henryk

related: https://mcmap.net/q/425836/-maintain-screen-position-always-centered-on-cursor/11107541 – Epiblast

Answer 3

If you are using vscodevim, zz should work.

Exodus

Answer 4

As @kwood put it, there is an extension Center Editor Window in the marketplace that meets this end.

I would like to make an answer here, to complement that -- even the extension's author did not explicitly state in the marketplace page -- if you would like to change the default key binding (Ctrl+L), you may try put the following lines in the keybindings.json for the keyboard bindings.

{
    "key": "cmd+k cmd+c",
    "command": "center-editor-window.center",
    "when": "editorTextFocus"
},

The above command sets ⌘ Command+K, ⌘ Command+C as the keyboard shortcut.

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Apart from that, you may set

"center-editor-window.threeStateToggle": true,

in the settings.json for VS Code settings so that it will switch among three states (center, top, bottom) instead of one (center).

Brachio