Is there a shortcut to move focus to the sidebar in Visual Studio Code?

Ctrl0 is the default binding of View: Focus into Side Bar command that focuses sidebar regardless what it shows at the moment - be it Explorer, Source Control, Extensions or any other pane. (Or reveals its last visible state.)

Zero (0) in this key combination represents character that "English-keyboard-layout" zero key in the top 'numerical' row produces in current regional keyboard layout. It is not the zero key in numpad.

Like most other actions it is easily discoverable either in the Command Palette (F1 or CtrlShiftP):

command palette with query: (greater-than sign) focus sidebar. Sole highlighted result reads "View: focus into Side Bar", words "focus" and "side bar" are emphasized. Keyboard shortcut hint reads "Ctrl + é" (control key plus Latin letter E with acute)

(N.B. é instead of 0 due to aforementioned regional layout in effect), or in the Keyboard Shortcuts settings page (CtrlK CtrlS):

VSC Keyboard Shortcuts settings with query "focus sidebar" showing sole Command result: "Focus into Side Bar", words "focus" and "side bar" are emphasized. There is the command ID that reads "workbench.action.focusSideBar"


Btw Ctrl1 .. 3 focuses editor groups respectively.


If you'd like to have this (or other) key combination to act like two way "focus toggle" between editor and sidebar (like Show Explorer behaves), you can alter your settings accordingly using distinct actions with identical key combination differentiated by excluding "when" conditions. Resulting part of keybindings.json would be

  { // Unbind unconditional default
    "key": "ctrl+0",
    "command": "-workbench.action.focusSideBar"
  },
  { // to ←
    "key": "ctrl+0",
    "when": "!sideBarFocus",
    "command": "workbench.action.focusSideBar"
  },
  { // from →
    "key": "ctrl+0",
    "when": "sideBarFocus",
    "command": "workbench.action.focusActiveEditorGroup"
  },

These are the different shortcuts to focus on the various components(in order of the icons) of the sidebar.

  1. File Explorer: ctrlshifte

  2. Search: ctrlshiftf

  3. Source Control: ctrlshiftg

  4. Debug: ctrlshiftd

  5. Extensions: ctrlshiftx

To toggle the visibility of the sidebar, just press ctrlb


Cmd + Shift + E works for me. See screenshot

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