Easy Kill

Select & Copy Things Easily in VS Code - a port of easy-kill for Emacs.

Install

• Visual Studio Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=knu.easy-kill. Official Microsoft marketplace listing for VS Code.
• Open VSX: https://open-vsx.org/extension/knu/easy-kill. Alternative registry used by VSCodium and other forks.

Features

• Drop-in replacement for standard copy (Cmd+C / Ctrl+C) - works with existing selections or triggers intelligent selection when no text is selected
• Quick copying/selecting with intelligent selection
• 30+ selection types: subword, word, line, sentence, paragraph, sexp, defun, function, block, string, parentheses, brackets, curlies (with/without delimiters), buffer, filename, URL, email, character search, and more
• Interactive expansion/shrinking of selections
• Duplicate selections quickly before or after the current selection
• Vim-friendly character search with f/t-style selection (forward/backward, to/up-to)

Usage

Commands

Selection Commands:

• Easy Kill: Copy (Ctrl+C / Cmd+C) - Copy text at point with intelligent selection. If text is already selected, performs standard copy.
• Easy Kill: Select (Alt+Shift+2) - Select text at point

Movement Commands:

• Easy Kill: Forward Subword (Alt+→ / Ctrl+Alt+→) - Move forward by subword (camelCase/snake_case aware)
• Easy Kill: Backward Subword (Alt+← / Ctrl+Alt+←) - Move backward by subword
• Easy Kill: Forward Word (Ctrl+Alt+→ / Ctrl+→) - Move forward by word
• Easy Kill: Backward Word (Ctrl+Alt+← / Ctrl+←) - Move backward by word
• Easy Kill: Forward Sentence - Move forward by sentence
• Easy Kill: Backward Sentence - Move backward by sentence

Note: Movement commands support selection when invoked with shift key.

Duplicate Commands:

• Easy Kill: Duplicate After - Insert a copy after the selection
• Easy Kill: Duplicate Before - Insert a copy before the selection

These commands duplicate the current selection, or if nothing is selected, the first matching object type from easyKill.objectTypeOrderForDuplicate (default: line). The original text remains selected, entering Select mode so you can press y repeatedly to create more copies.

Interactive Selection

After triggering a command, you can interactively adjust the selection:

• Confirm (Enter) - Confirm selection and exit
• Cancel (Escape/Ctrl+G) - Cancel and restore cursor position
• Expand (+/=) - Expand selection by 1
• Shrink (-) - Shrink selection by 1
• Cycle (Space) - Cycle through selection types
• Duplicate After (y) - Insert a copy after the selection
• Add to Count (1-9) - Add N to current count (e.g., pressing 4 when count is 1 expands to 5 instances; pressing 4 when count is -1 expands to 3 instances)
• Reset (0) - Reset to initial size (count = 1)
• Change Type (letter keys) - Switch to specific selection type (see Selection Types below)

All key bindings above (except Cancel) are customizable via the easyKill.keyBindings setting. To customize Cancel (Escape/Ctrl+G), use VS Code's Keyboard Shortcuts settings for the easyKill.cancel command.

Selection Types

Available selection types (default key bindings shown in parentheses, customizable via settings):

Text Objects:

• Subword (w) - camelCase/snake_case aware word part
• Word (W/s) - "word" (symbol in Emacs / WORD in Vim)
• Line (l) - Current line with newline
• Sentence (.) - Sentence ending with punctuation
• Paragraph (p) - Text between blank lines

Code Structures:

• Sexp (e) - S-expression or balanced expression
• Defun (d) - Enclosing function/method/class definition
• Defun Name (D) - Name of enclosing function only
• Function (f) - Alias for defun
• Block (b) - Alias for sexp

Delimited Regions:

• String (q) - String at cursor (language-aware)
• String Universal (Q) - String with any quote type
• Parentheses (() - Text including parentheses
• Parentheses Content ()) - Text inside parentheses
• Brackets ([) - Text including brackets
• Brackets Content (]) - Text inside brackets
• Curlies ({) - Text including braces
• Curlies Content (}) - Text inside braces

Buffer Regions:

• Buffer (a) - Entire buffer content
• Buffer Before (<) - From buffer start to cursor
• Buffer After (>) - From cursor to buffer end

Special:

• Filename (/) - File path at cursor
• Buffer File Name (n) - Current file's full path
• URL (u) - URL at cursor (auto-prefixes protocol)
• Email (@) - Email address at cursor
• Backward Line Edge (^) - From line start/indent to cursor
• Forward Line Edge ($) - From cursor to line end

Character Search:

• To Char Forward (f) - From cursor to character (inclusive)
• Up To Char Forward (t) - From cursor to before character
• To Char Backward (F) - From character to cursor (inclusive)
• Up To Char Backward (T) - From after character to cursor

How It Works

Copy Mode (Cmd+C / Ctrl+C)

1. If text is selected, performs standard copy
2. If no selection, triggers easy-kill (copy) mode:
   • Extension selects text starting from smallest match (word)
   • Selection is prepared first, then copied when the copy session is finalized (normally by Enter/Return)
   • The session can also be finalized by other commands that leave Easy Kill copy-mode context
   • Adjust selection using quick pick menu
   • Selection changes do not copy to the OS clipboard until acceptance

Select Mode (Alt+Shift+2)

1. Trigger the command
2. Extension selects text starting from smallest match (word)
3. Adjust selection using quick pick menu
4. On confirm, text is selected in editor (not copied)

Integration

Awesome Emacs Keymap (emacs-mcx)

If you use Awesome Emacs Keymap (emacs-mcx), Easy Kill integrates with its kill ring by sending only the final selection when the copy session ends. Intermediate selection changes are never pushed to the OS clipboard or emacs-mcx. Use C-y to yank the latest copy and M-y to cycle through earlier ones.

Inspiration

This extension is a port of easy-kill and easy-kill-extras for Emacs, bringing their intelligent selection and manipulation capabilities to VS Code.

License

Copyright (c) 2025-2026 Akinori Musha

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

Repository

https://github.com/knu/vscode-easy-kill