Highlights from VSCode 1.59

Highlights from VSCode 1.59

This blog post originally appeared on the Official Dendron Blog. Dendron is an open-source, local-first, markdown-based, note-taking tool built on top of VSCode.


The open source VSCode project, along with VSCodium , completed their latest monthly release with v1.59. Let's take a look at some features that the insiders build had their impatient, bleeding-edge hands on (before we all forget what 1.59 brought before the upcoming August 2021 release).

Share view state

VSCode users are often bouncing around different files in their workspaces. By default, if you close out a file tab, VSCode doesn't track where you were in that file. This can be annoying if you didn't mean to close out the file, or because you were playing whack a mole with the new new workspace trust popups.

Say hello to shared view states across editor groups. Editor groups are the windows of tab collections within the VSCode editor that grow whenever Split Editor/Open to the Side commands are used. These groups can remember your past so that your rampant mind doesn't need to.

GIF showing the share view state feature with The House on The Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson

Ah yes, that's right, I left off at the pig people.

Terminal magic tricks

By default, a new terminal can be created with Ctrl+Tilde(~), where it pops up in the bottom as an entryway into the powerful, dark underbelly of shells. VSCode 1.59 highlights some wizardry alternatives.

Create terminals to the side

Are you one of those people who spins a monitor into portrait mode, because of some insatiable love for 90o angles? Maybe you simply prefer tall terminals? Ctrl+Shift+P and Terminal: Create Terminal in Editor Area to the Side, will be exactly what you're looking for.

workbench.action.createTerminalEditorSide provides this functionality, and is an alternative that can be entered after Ctrl+Shift+P.

GIF showing the creation of terminals to the side, instead of defaulting to the bottom

Drag and drop terminals across windows

How many VSCode windows are sitting open on your desktop? Are you taking notes in one workspace, while continuing your commands in a separate VSCode window? Make your life easier, retain all your in-shell variables, and drag the active terminal from one window to another.

This can be helpful when improving the documentation in one window as active development is happening in another.

GIF showing the drag-and-drop feature of terminals into different VSCode windows

An excellent bonus: remember when typos were just typos? The worst thing that could happen was other people making fun of your lack of oxford comma's. Now, with terminal editors, your typo can shutdown your production database! Fun!

Live preview

The Live Preview extension, originally released in June, has continued along. For users working in JavaScript land, Live Preview: Show Debug Preview ensures a built-in JavaScript debugger[^9].

Note that this extension has the warning:

WARNING: this is extension is still under development!

For the brave javascripters among you all, who want the beautiful reflections of instant-progress within the editor, take it for a test drive. Report any issues to the microsoft/vscode-livepreview repo.

For more information, see latest highlights around Live Preview. Observe the animated bunny stuck waving in an infinite loop, trapped in a simulation. More in-depth information (on the extension, not the bunny) can be found directly within the extension release notes.

Other notables

General tip: Wondering what shortcuts are configured in VSCode? One shortcut to rule them all: Ctrl+K Ctrl+S

  • Or Ctrl+Shift+P -> Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts
  • If you're using an M1 Mac, you should get the latest VSCode 1.59.1 point release, as it addresses a bug where VSCode may crash.
  • A preview feature[^11] has been added for automatic language detection in unsaved/untitled files. experimentalLanguageDetection (search against settings via Ctrl+Comma) can be set to true, which uses an ML model from yoeo/Guesslang with the open-source ML library Tensorflow.js. VSCode is planning for this feature to be true by default in the future, so that code is recognized out-of-box, instead of always relying on the file extension or force Change Language Mode (Ctrl+K M).

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