General Settings

This dialog box lets you change global settings for the Visual Studio Code and Text Editor. To display this dialog box, click Options on the Tools menu, expand the Text Editor folder, and then click General.

Note: The dialog boxes and menu commands you see might differ from those described in Help depending on your active settings or edition. To change your settings, choose Import and Export Settings on the Tools menu.

Settings

Drag and drop text editing

When selected, this enables you to move text by selecting and dragging the text with the mouse to another location within the current document or any other open document.

Automatic delimiter highlighting

When selected, delimiter characters that separate parameters or item-value pairs, as well as matching braces, are highlighted.

Track changes

When selected, the code editor's selection margin displays a vertical yellow line to mark code recently changed and vertical green lines next to unchanged code.

Auto-detect UTF-8 encoding without signature

By default, the editor detects encoding by searching for byte order marks or charset tags. If neither is found in the current document, the code editor attempts to auto-detect UTF-8 encoding by scanning byte sequences. To disable the auto-detection of encoding, clear this option.

Display

Selection margin

When selected, a vertical margin along the left edge of the editor's text area is displayed. You can click this margin to select an entire line of text, or click and drag to select consecutive lines of text. Selection Margin on/Selection Margin off

Indicator margin

When selected, a vertical margin outside the left edge of the editor's text area is displayed. When you click in this margin, an icon and ToolTip that are related to the text appear. For example, breakpoint or task list shortcuts appear in the indicator margin. Indicator Margin information does not print.

Vertical scroll bar

When selected, a vertical scrollbar which allows you to scroll up and down to view elements that fall outside the viewing area of the Editor is displayed. If vertical scrollbars are not available, you can use the Page Up, Page Down, and cursor keys to scroll.

Horizontal scroll bar

When selected, a horizontal scrollbar which allows you to scroll from side-to-side to view elements that fall outside the viewing area of the Editor is displayed. If horizontal scrollbars are unavailable, you can use the cursor keys to scroll.