Light Emacs Bindings

日本語版はこちら / Japanese version here → README.ja.md

Ever had an Emacs keybinding extension quietly break copy-paste on you — working in one panel, dead in another? Not this one. Copy, Cut, and Paste stay exactly as VS Code intends, always, everywhere. This extension only adds the Emacs muscle memory that doesn't fight your editor — and anywhere a conflict truly can't be avoided, it's documented up front and can be switched off in one click.

Policy

• Copy / Cut / Paste (Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V) are never broken. Ctrl+X doubles as the Emacs C-x prefix, but if nothing follows within ~1 second it automatically falls back to a native Cut — see How Ctrl+X works.
• Every other override is listed below, and every feature group can be toggled independently from VS Code's own Settings UI — no custom webview, no extra app to learn.

Keybindings by category

Movement

Ctrl+V and Ctrl+C are never bound by this extension — Paste and Copy stay native.

In the integrated terminal, Ctrl+F / Ctrl+B / Ctrl+N / Ctrl+P / Ctrl+A / Ctrl+E send the matching raw control character (0x06 / 0x02 / 0x0E / 0x10 / 0x01 / 0x05) instead, so your shell's own readline movement runs. Without this, VS Code intercepts Ctrl+E and Ctrl+P for Quick Open and Ctrl+F for the terminal find widget before the shell ever sees them — those three keys are the reason this exists; the other three are bound too so terminal behaviour stays predictable regardless of your terminal.integrated.commandsToSkipShell setting.

Mark & selection

Search

File & editing

Commands

How Ctrl+X works

Ctrl+X is not implemented as a native VS Code chord. VS Code has a confirmed, open limitation (microsoft/vscode#140226): once a key is registered as the first half of a chord, pressing it alone and not following up doesn't fall back to whatever it used to do — it's just silently swallowed. For Ctrl+X, that would mean losing Cut. So instead:

1. Ctrl+X alone starts a ~1 second window.
2. Ctrl+F (go to file), Space (toggle rectangle selection), or Ctrl+S (save) within that window does the corresponding action.
3. Nothing follows within the window → a native Cut fires automatically, exactly as bare Ctrl+X always would.
4. Ctrl+G cancels the window without cutting.

Overrides at a glance

Copy, Cut, and Paste are never in this table — they're not touched.

Settings

Search "Light Emacs Bindings" in VS Code's Settings UI, or edit settings.json directly:

{
  "lightEmacsBindings.movement.enabled": false,
  "lightEmacsBindings.killLine.enabled": false
}

Bind your own toggle key

lightEmacsBindings.toggleEnabled ships with no default keybinding. Add one in keybindings.json:

{
  "key": "ctrl+alt+e",
  "command": "lightEmacsBindings.toggleEnabled"
}

Known limitations / Roadmap

• Keyboard macros are out of scope for v1. VS Code has no general-purpose macro-recording API and no way to intercept arbitrary command execution. A future version might offer a scoped recorder limited to this extension's own commands (movement, mark, rectangle selection, go-to-file, etc.) — that would be low-risk; a general one would not.
• If you disable only one of rectangleSelection.enabled / goToFile.enabled / save.enabled, its Ctrl+X follow-up key falls through to that key's own VS Code default during the ~1 second window instead of doing nothing.
• Alt+F / Alt+B may collide with File-menu mnemonics if your menu bar is visible (no issue if it's hidden).

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85.0 or later.

Development

npm install       # install dependencies
npm run compile   # type-check, then bundle with esbuild
npm run watch     # rebuild on save
npm test          # run the vitest unit tests
npm run icon      # regenerate images/icon.png from images/icon.svg
npm run package   # produce a .vsix

Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host with this extension loaded.

Release

Push a v* tag to trigger .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds a .vsix and attaches it to a GitHub Release.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.