vscode-emacs-indent

Provides Emacs-like Tab behavior for VS Code.

In Emacs, pressing Tab on any column reindents the current line to the correct indentation level, rather than inserting a tab character or spaces at the cursor position. This extension replicates that behavior.

Features

• Tab reindents the current line — pressing Tab anywhere on a line applies editor.action.reindentselectedlines, moving the cursor to the correct indent position afterward
• Plain text fallback — in plain text files, Tab falls back to the standard editor.action.indentLines
• Blank line handling — when the line above the cursor is empty, the extension expands the selection upward to the nearest non-empty line before reindenting, matching Emacs behavior

Keybinding

To disable or remap, open Keyboard Shortcuts (Ctrl+K Ctrl+S) and search for emacs-indent.reindentCurrentLine.

Requirements

VS Code 1.85.0 or later.

Usage with a Formatter

This extension handles reindentation (moving a line to the correct indent level), not formatting. For full code formatting, pair it with a formatter such as Prettier.

Recommended .vscode/settings.json for TypeScript projects:

{
  "[typescript]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode",
    "editor.formatOnSave": true
  }
}

With this setup, Tab reindents the current line immediately (this extension), and the file is fully formatted on save (Prettier).