Overview

VSCode uses different keyboard shortcuts to start the integrated terminal and to switch focus from the editor pane to the terminal.

Configuring VSCode to use a single keyboard shortcut to both start a terminal if one isn’t running/open and toggle focus between the editor and terminal is useful default behaviour for many workflows.

How-to

  1. Open the command palette with ctrl-shift-p

  2. Type “Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON)” and ENTER

    Note: This is a discrete entry, “Preferences: Open Default Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON)” is a different configuration element.

  3. Add the following entries to keybindings.json:
// Toggle between terminal and editor focus
{
    "key":     "ctrl+`",
    "command": "workbench.action.terminal.focus"
},
{
    "key":     "ctrl+`",
    "command": "workbench.action.focusActiveEditorGroup",
    "when":    "terminalFocus"
}

Note: some keyboards and/or regionalisation settings may require ctrl+oem_8 in place of ctrl+`.

Further reading

  • https://stackoverflow.com/a/43012779
  • https://stackoverflow.com/a/68730522