Hands-on

Hands-on is a Keymap extension for Visual Studio Code that aims at dramatical increase of coding experience by keeping your hands in typing position at all times, even during navigation. This is an extended port of hands-on for atom.

Hands-on puts navigation and control keys under the right hand, where it is naturally located when typing. This way navigation actions would not alter hand position, and you can proceed with typing immediately.

Hands-on mode is activated by holding left Alt key (Command on Mac). When the mode is active, some of the letter key act as navigation keys:

key	action
Home row	essential navigation
Alt J	move left one character
Alt K	move down
Alt L	move up
Alt :	move right
Lower row	works on bigger distance
Alt M	move to the line start Home (first non-whitespace character of a wrapped part of the line)
Alt ,	page down
Alt .	page up
Alt /	move to the line end End (last non-whitespace character of a wrapped part of the line)
Adding Ctrl	increases impact
Ctrl Alt J	move left one word
Ctrl Alt K	move down 5 lines
Ctrl Alt L	move up 5 lines
Ctrl Alt :	move right one word
Ctrl Alt M	move to the (whole) line start
Ctrl Alt ,	move to the file start
Ctrl Alt .	move to the file end
Ctrl Alt /	move to the (whole) line end
Adding Shift	also performs selection
...	...for example...
Alt Shift J	select one character to the left
Ctrl Alt Shift L	select 5 lines above
Ctrl Alt Shift .	select everything from here to the end of file
...	...and so on...
Top row	performs scrolling
Alt I	scroll down
Alt O	scroll up
Alt Ctrl I	scroll down stronger
Alt Ctrl O	scroll up stronger
Useful extras
Alt '	type newline Enter
Alt [	erase to the left Backspace
Alt ]	erase to the right Delete
Ctrl Alt [	erase word to the left
Ctrl Alt ]	erase word to the right
Using Meta (Command on Mac, Win+Alt on Windowss)	performs group navigation
Meta J	switch to the group on the left
Meta K	switch to the group below
Meta L	switch to the group above
Meta :	switch to the group on the right
Meta U	decrease group width
Meta I	decrease group height
Meta O	increase group height
Meta P	increase group width

note: Meta stands for Win+Alt on Windows (not just Win) in order to avoid conflicts with sytem hotkeys

note: there is no additional keybinding to split or close group provided by hands-on, because it is available in Visual Studio Code by combinations like Ctrl / and Ctrl W

Hands-on is layout-agnostic, meaning that it is tied to keycodes, and always resides in the same place under your right hand, even if you use Dvorak for Programmers. For example, in German layout the key to press for moving to the end of the line would be Alt -, instead of Alt / for US layout (but physical position of the key is intact).

I am from the world of emacs, the main feature I have been missing so far was the opportunity to navigate without moving my hands away from their normal position (and therefore avoid briefly looking at the keyboard when puting them back in order to properly position).

Base navigation line layout ← ↓ ↑ → was inspired by vim. Main navigation keys moved one position to the right eventually (in vim it starts with the H key), which is more natural position of the right hand.

https://asvd.github.io

https://twitter.com/asvd0