Nifty Shortcut Trainer
Learn VS Code keyboard shortcuts while you work: spots slow habits like arrow-key walking or copy-paste duplicating and suggests the shortcut, plus a cheat sheet.
Maintained. No sign-in. No telemetry. Works in VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium and other editors that use Open VSX.
Features
- Learn by doing. Nifty Shortcut Trainer watches for the slow way of doing things and suggests the shortcut, once:
- walking along a line with the arrow keys → jump by word
- scrolling down line by line with the arrow keys → go to symbol
- holding Backspace → delete a whole word
- typing
// or # at the start of line after line → toggle comment
- copying a line and pasting it below → duplicate line
- indenting lines one at a time → indent the selection
- Polite. At most one tip every 10 minutes (configurable), the same tip at most once a day, and never again once you click Got It. Stop Tips turns them off.
- A cheat sheet worth keeping open. 33 shortcuts that make the biggest difference, grouped (navigate, move, select, edit, search, view) and shown with your platform's keys. Filter it, and click any row to see or change its binding.
- Private. Everything happens locally; nothing about your typing is stored or sent anywhere. Only which tips you've seen is remembered.
- Works in the browser on vscode.dev and github.dev.
Commands
| Command |
What it does |
Nifty Shortcut Trainer: Show Cheat Sheet |
Open the cheat sheet |
Nifty Shortcut Trainer: Turn Shortcut Tips On/Off |
Pause or resume tips |
Nifty Shortcut Trainer: Reset Learned Tips |
Show tips you've dismissed again |
Nifty Shortcut Trainer: Show Tip Stats |
How many tips you've seen and learned |
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
What it does |
nifty.shortcuts.enabled |
true |
Suggest shortcuts while you work |
nifty.shortcuts.minutesBetweenTips |
10 |
Minimum minutes between tips |
The keys shown are VS Code's defaults. If you've changed a binding, click the row in the cheat sheet to see yours.
Install
- VS Code: search for "Nifty Shortcut Trainer" in the Extensions view, or install from the Visual Studio Marketplace.
- Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium, Kiro, Antigravity: install from Open VSX.
Privacy
This extension collects no telemetry and needs no account.
- Nifty Workspace Keybindings: Per-Project Shortcuts: Keybindings per project: put them in .vscode/keybindings.json and they work only in that workspace, shared with your team through Git. Something VS Code doesn't do on its own. (Open VSX)
- Nifty Settings Sync: Sync via GitHub Gist: Sync settings, keybindings, snippets and extensions between VSCodium, Cursor, Windsurf and VS Code through a private GitHub Gist, with a diff before anything is overwritten. (Open VSX)
- Nifty Beautify: Format HTML in PHP, Blade & Twig: Format HTML inside PHP, Blade, Twig, Jinja, Handlebars, ERB and Liquid templates without breaking the template tags. (Open VSX)
- Nifty Branches: Clean Up Merged Git Branches: Safely clean up merged, squash-merged, gone and stale git branches, with a preview and one-click restore. (Open VSX)
- Nifty C# Templates: New Class, Record & Namespace: New C# class, interface, record, enum, test and controller files with the right namespace, plus namespace syncing. (Open VSX)
- Nifty Code Runner: Run Code in 25+ Languages: Run the current file or selection in 25+ languages in the terminal, with input support, your own commands and no telemetry. (Open VSX)
See all 35 Nifty tools at https://getnifty.dev
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