metaseed / metaGo

MetaGo provides fast cursor movement/selection for keyboard focused users in vscode

First of all, Metago is a tool made for myself, it comes from the voice in my heart💖as a programmer. Metago tries its best to be the coolest😎 keyboard(mouseless) focused navigation tool in vscode. Metago tries to make your keyboard⌨ to you as meaningful as a kitchen knife to a master chef👩‍🍳.

Metago as a free tool, currently is maintained and developed by me in my spare time🌙⏳, if you think has ever saved you time, boosted your efficiency, or even indispensable like some of our users, please support me 😊

Give me a github⭐, or even sponsor me at github🍻

quotes from users:

Wicked fast cursor movement/selection for a focus on keyboard usage. This changed how I use VS Code forever. Seriously.

This boosts my performance so much since It’s a trouble for me to use VIM (I’m leftie :( )

probably the best tool for keyboard driven navigation bar none (better than vim), includes bookmarks

MetaGo is a way to move your cursor to a position quickly and without using your mouse/trackpad.

Oh, man.. I have a feeling that after that I'm going to feel crippled without it. This is fantastic.

This takes a bit to get used to but so much worth it! I really think this should be mainstream and every modern editor should support this.

and MORE from you...

Features Summary

MetaGo provides fast cursor movement/selection/delete for keyboard focused users:

• MetaJump

  • features highlight
  • go to any character on screen with 3(most cases) or 4 times key press
  • select to any character in the active editor
  • add multiple cursors to the active editor
  • change active selection in multiple selections
  • delete to any character

• MetaSelection

  • lines selection
  • alternate Selection's active with anchor
  • surrounding-pair selection
    • surrounding-pair selection of common tag
    • surrounding-pair selection of html tag
    • surrounding-pair changing demo

• Navigate between files using bookmarks

• MetaWord

• Other features

  • scroll the active line to the screen top, middle and bottom
  • moving/select up/down between blank lines
  • jump to bracket

metaJump

metaJump is one part of the tool set MetaGo, with the goal to do cursor moving/selecting/deleting by showing decorators on possible target-locations. (detail document of MetaJump)

metaSelection

lines selection

vsCode's default select current line command(Ctrl+l) selects current line and puts the cursor at the next line's start position. we create our own to extend/shrink the selection of the current line:

• Ctrl+l to select current line if no selection at cursor, or extend/shrink selections by one line below if there is selection before/after the cursor.
• Ctrl+o to extend/shrink selection by one line above if there is selection after/before the cursor.

extend/shrink selections work at the selection's active end(where cursor flashing), if you want to extend/shrink at the selection's anchor end, use Alt+a to alternate selection's anchor with active at first.

note: Ctrl+o triggers open file by default, and it triggers extend line selection above only when there is selection in active editor.

if you want to select line up, you should press Ctrl+l to select current line and then press Ctrl+o to extend line selection above.

by default selectLineUp command is configured as:

{
    "command": "metaGo.selectLineUp",
    "key": "ctrl+o",
    "when": "editorTextFocus && editorHasSelection"
}

you could assign a shortcut key not collision with default vscode ones, just remove the editorHasSelection condition, so it works even with no selection in editor.

alternate Selection's active with anchor

• Alt+a to alternate the selection's active(cursor flashing) with the anchor.

➭Feature Summary⮵

lineSelection demo

we use ctrl+l to select current line, then ctrl+l again to extend current selection below, then ctrl+o to shrink current selection above, then alt+a to alternate the current selection's active end with anchor end, then ctrl+o to extend current selection above, then ctrl+alt+/ to add another cursor, and ctrl+l to select current line, ctrl+l again to extend selection below, then alt+a to alternate selection's active with anchor, then ctrl+o to extend selection above.

With the two selections, you could then delete or copy...

➭Feature Summary⮵

surrounding-pair selection

commands to select content inside a pair of separators: '(',')'; '[',']'; '{','}';'<','>'; '>', '<'; or any char pair: ''', '"'... html tag pair is supported via regexp. (i.e. to select content between two html tag pairs: alt+shift+p t, t means tag).

• Alt+p to chang surrounding pairs.
• Alt+Shift+p to select content between surrounding pairs.
• Alt+Ctrl+p to select both the content and the pairs.

1. Alt+Shift+p: I want to select content between a pair of chars.
2. type the start character of the pair. i.e. '(', '[', '{', '"'... or the specific regex key(i.e. 't' for html/xml tag)

Note: Alt+Ctrl+p to selection both the content and the pair of separators.

it supports multiple cursors/selections

➭Feature Summary⮵

surroundPairs config

below is the default surrounding-pairs config, it support regex:

"metaGo.surroundPairs": {
    "type": "object",
    "default":[["{","}"],["(",")"],["[","]"],["<",">"],["/<(?!/)(?!!)(?!br[\\s>])(?!area[\\s>])(?!base[\\s>])(?!col[\\s>])(?!command[\\s>])(?!embed[\\s>])(?!hr[\\s>])(?!img[\\s>])(?!input[\\s>])(?!keygen[\\s>])(?!link[\\s>])(?!meta[\\s>])(?!param[\\s>])(?!source[\\s>])(?!track[\\s>])(?!wbr[\\s>])((?:.(?!/>))+?)(?<!/)>/ms", "/<\/(.+?)>/", "t"]]
},

the last one is and regex, it is used for html tag: this array has 3 items: start html tag regex, end html tag regex, trigger key. the default trigger key is the start pair, if start pair is only one char. regex is the content inside '/' and '/', is defined by javascript regex grammar you could config your own regex pairs the regex pairs support all regex flags, which means it support multiline tag.

html elements is defined in https://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html-markup-20110405/syntax.html#syntax-elements

➭Feature Summary⮵

surrounding-pair-selection demo

we use alt+shift+p ( to select content inside the '(' and ')', then alt+shift+p { to extend selection, then alt+shift+p { to extend further, then alt+ctrl+p { to include then pair('{'and '}') in the selection, then alt+ctrl+p to extend the selection further with the pair('{' and '}') included.

note: the hotkey in gif has been changed

➭Feature Summary⮵

surrounding-pair-selection demo: html tag pairs

we use alt+shift+p t to select content inside html tag, alt+ctrl+p to select both the content and the tag pairs. if the cursor is in the start or end tag, alt+shift+p t would select both the tag and the content.

note: hotkeys in gif have been changed

➭Feature Summary⮵

surrounding-pair changing demo

in this demo, we alt+p ' " to change a pair of ' to ", and then goto another place use alt+p [ ( to change a pair to '[]' to '()'. Then we switch to another html file, where we alt+p t to change a surrounding pair of 'h1' to 'h2', and go to another place, to use alt+p t to change another pair of tag from 'h3' to 'h1', note: here is a multi-line start-tag, we use alt+shift+// to shrink the selection first and then modify the pair of tag.

➭Feature Summary⮵

navigate between files using bookmarks

• Alt+ ' to toggle a bookmark at the cursor location.
• Alt+ [ goto previous bookmark.
• Alt+ ] goto next bookmark.
• Alt+\ to list the bookmarks with management menu:
  1. press cc then enter to clear all the bookmarks
  2. press c then enter to clear all the bookmarks in current document.
  3. press n then enter to go to the next bookmark.
  4. press p then enter to go to the previous bookmark.

➭Feature Summary⮵

Other features

scroll the active line to the screen top, middle and bottom

• Alt+t is the default shortcut to scroll current line to screen top.
• Alt+m is the default shortcut to scroll current line to screen middle.
• Alt+b is the default shortcut to scroll current line to screen bottom.

move/select up/down between blank lines

• Alt+Home to move cursor to the blank line above.
• Alt+End to move cursor to the blank line below.
• Alt+Shift+Home to select from the cursor to the blank line above.
• Alt+Shift+End to select from the cursor to the blank line below.

➭Feature Summary⮵

jump to bracket

default command always put cursor before the bracket, we want it after start bracket and before end bracket.

default command always search down for the end bracket if the cursor is not at bracket, we want it search up.

• ctrl+shift+\: jump to the begin bracket that contains the cursor. Press the shortcut again jump to the end bracket.

➭Feature Summary⮵

to invoke command from command panel

it's very easy to trigger metago command: type F1, xx.... xx` is a prefix for search metago commands

➭Feature Summary⮵

Other resources that help you understand MetaGo

Use MetaGo to Quickly Move Around Your Code in VS Code

➭Feature Summary⮵

Default Shortcut Settings

To configure the keybinding, press ctrl+k ctrl+s, or via menu: File -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts:

default shortcuts refer: keybindings section in package.json

➭Feature Summary⮵

Extension Settings

To modify the settings, press ctrl+,, and search metago...

default setting refer: configuration section in package.json

➭Feature Summary⮵

Credits

Contributors:

Thank you to all the people who have already contributed to MetaGo!🤞

➭Feature Summary⮵

Notes

if you like this tool, and using Windows, you may also be interested in my other tool: metaTool. (release soon) 😉 with metaTool running with it's metaKeyboard plugin, you just using the 61 keys main keyboard area to type any key you want.

i.e. to jump next blank line in the document, currently the default trigger is Alt+End, now you could useLAlt+;, because LAlt+; is expanded to Alt+end